


Rao

by coffeehousehaunt



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alien Gender/Sexuality, Alpha!Kara, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angst, Astra the Wine Aunt, Awkward Family Gatherings, CatCo Magazine, Conlanging, Denial of Feelings, Explicit Consent, F/F, First Time, High school-typical awkwardness, Kryptonian, Languages and Linguistics, Masturbation, Mutual Pining, Ohhhhhhhh we're going there people, Omega!alex, Power Dynamics, Relationship Negotiation, Slow Burn, Weird gender meta, Yes there will be cock, alternate biology, knots
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-10
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2018-09-16 15:17:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 12
Words: 42,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9277700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeehousehaunt/pseuds/coffeehousehaunt
Summary: The Standard Kalex Fic where Alex grows up protecting Kara, Kara grows up thinking the world of Alex, and they'reexactly the sisters they're supposed to be(except they're not and they're gonna pine over each other for like eight years)--with an ABO twist.OR,Kara and Alex have finally managed to reach a place where they can both pretend they're happy with the roles they're supposed to occupy in each other's lives--until Alex goes into heat.OR,Y'know how you have thatone fic(or genre or trope or whatever) that youswearyou're never going to write? Yeah. This is that one.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> *sing-song voice* I'm going to hellllllllll
> 
> A big thank-you to my trash bin buddy, Satan, for dragging me into this pit. (That's a lie. I dove in and started splashing around.)

“Hank?” Kara can’t keep the surprise out of her voice—it’s not that they never talk, but he usually communicates through Alex. 

And when it’s a phone call, it’s usually trouble. 

“ _Have you heard from Alex? She didn’t come in today._ ”

“What? No, not since yesterday.” Kara’s mind immediately kicks over, running through the options— “Shit.” 

Except—Alex is good at this. Has been handling this on her own since she was fifteen and— 

“ _That doesn’t sound promising._ ” 

“Sorry, just—I’ll… I’ll check on her.” She swallows hard. The last time she checked on Alex and Alex didn’t want to be checked on… 

“ _Is this related to…?_ ” 

Kara can feel herself frown. “How much d’you know?” 

Hank sighs, and that says… about everything. “ _The biggest adjustment that I went through when I came to Earth was this barbaric hierarchy that you’ve managed to sexualize._ ” Kara can’t disagree with a single word of that. “ _Suffice to say that you—all of you—advertise a lot more than you mean to._ ” He pauses, and Kara’s heart sinks into her boots. “ _Your sister is my best agent and the closest thing I have to a daughter. And she’s a leader, same as you. Secret’s safe with me. Just make sure_ she’s _safe._ ” 

Kara’s heart soars. “I will.” 

Hank’s voice comes gruff and unreadable over the line as he hangs up, but Kara feels a smile spread across her face. “ _Primates._ ” 

That smile doesn’t last. The moment she hangs up, her hands are shaking, a thousand things racing through her head. 

She should call Hank back and ask him to check on Alex. She could ask Lucy to do it, or, shit, Vasquez. Vasquez probably knows; Alex seems close with her. 

Kara is the last person Alex should be around when— 

—If. If, if if—if the way she’d bristled and bumped into that new probie, Miller, earlier this week when he’d looked too long at Alex wasn’t just disgust. If the way she’s been able to practically sense whenever Alex is in the room hasn’t been just her own heightened senses and J’onn’s mindfulness training— 

—When she’s in heat.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some obligatory world-building on Krypton.
> 
> In which Astra is the Inappropriate Relative who brings her girlfriend to a family get-together instead of her husband, drinks a lot of wine, and then calls said girlfriend dirty pet names in front of the kids. 
> 
> There's a reason why she's Kara's favorite, after all.

Feast-days meant that Kara got to see Aunt Astra—even though, lately, whenever Kara asked her mother if she would be at family gatherings, Father would clear his throat and pointedly focus on his reports. This time, though, Kara didn’t care.  
  
“Aunt Astra!” Kara launches herself at her aunt as soon as she’s through the door—possibly the only person on this whole planet who would indulge such a breach of propriety, even among family. Kara takes full advantage of that.  
  
“Little one!” Astra catches her with a laugh, lifts her, and spins her around. Kara giggles delightedly and hugs her as tight as she can. Now that Kara is ten, Astra is the only one in her family who can still pick her up.  
  
Astra lets out a self-deprecating groan. “You’ve grown, little one.” She says with a laugh as she sets Kara down and straightens to greet Alura and Zor-El.  
  
Alura watches them with a look like she’s trying very hard not to laugh, one corner of her mouth twitching upward while she struggles to maintain the frown that Zor-El seems to have no trouble holding.  
  
“Sister.” The air between them turns heavy, and Kara feels Astra’s spine straighten to military perfection; but the warmth remains in her voice. The smile fades a little from Alura’s face, but not from her eyes.  
  
“Sister.”  
  
“Brother.” There’s no mistaking the edge in Astra’s voice now as she greets Zor-El. Zor-El inclines his head.  
  
“Who have you brought with you, sister?” Alura asks politely.  
  
Astra lets go of Kara and pulls an unfamiliar woman close to her who Kara didn’t see in her excitement. “This is Jenna Val-Tor.”  
  
Alura inclines her head. “Welcome, Jenna Val-Tor.”  
  
“Thank you for welcoming me into your home, Alura Zor-El. Zor-El, thank you, as well.”  
  
“Astra’s chosen are welcome among us.”  
  
Even Kara can hear the forced politeness in his tone. Still, this is the House of El, and they don’t turn away family.  
  
//  
  
After dinner, when the last of the food is cleared away and before the adults send the children away for the night, everyone sits and talks quietly—the adults drinking wine. Some of them are several glasses in.  
  
Astra leans her forehead against Jenna’s temple and smiles. “I’ll get us more wine, _te-zhraomin_.” She purrs in her ear, and Jenna blushes and ducks her head, smiling and placing one hand on Astra’s thigh.  
  
Zor-El inhales some of his wine and starts coughing. Jor-El, on the other side of Zor-El, startles. Lana coughs politely to cover a laugh. Alura ducks her head to hide the smile on her face.  
  
Kara waits until after Astra’s gotten up and disappeared into the kitchen, and Jor-El and Lana are fussing over Zor-El, to ask Alura in a quiet voice, “Mother, I know “wife” and “husband”. What’s “ _te-zhraomin_?’”  
  
Not quietly enough, apparently. A muscle tics in Zor-El’s jaw. Alura coughs quietly into her fist, smile returning, and spares a glance over at her husband. “You’ll have to ask your aunt, I’m afraid.”  
  
//  
  
So she does. She even stays up after her bedtime and waits until the adults have started to disperse from the dining room before she searches Astra out.  
  
She hears Astra’s voice coming from the kitchen; she stops short of entering, though, when she hears her mother’s voice as well.  
  
“Are you going to scold me for such a breach of propriety under your roof? In front of Kara?” Astra asks playfully.  
  
“Zor-El already had his rant about you bringing your _beloved_ to a family gathering,” Alura replies dryly, “He wanted to know whether or not I knew this was going to happen, and why didn’t I prevent it.”  
  
Astra hums. “And you?”  
  
“I told him that I didn’t know, but she _is_ your mate, and he knew what we both were before I married him.” Alura sighs. “Besides, when Kara asks about it, _you’re_ explaining it to her. She takes after you more than I.”  
  
“I think _you_ forget how often you incited our mischief, before you married Zor-El.”  
  
“Mm. The men of this house are dreadfully dull.” Alura pauses. “Just—don’t show her any pictures. I know you have them. I’m amazed your husband hasn’t found them yet.”  
  
Astra laughs. “I share them with him. He is in all things my right hand.”  
  
Alura laughs despairingly.  
  
//  
  
“Hello, little one.” Astra says when Kara slips through the door and joins her on the balcony. Red light from below filters up, making her glass fiery and turning her wine into a blood-colored star.  
  
Kara sighs. “I thought you said I was getting better at sneaking up on you.”  
  
“You are, little one. But I’m very hard to sneak up on.” Astra smiles and holds out her arm. “Come here.”  
  
Kara settles under Astra’s arm, the question on her tongue, but not sure how to begin the question, now that she knows Astra must be expecting the question.  
  
So, she dives in.  
  
“Aunt Astra, what’s… _te-zhraomin_?”  
  
Astra looks into her wine and laughs quietly. “It means Jenna is my Rao.”  
  
Kara frowns, mind working. _That_ was not the answer she was expecting—husband, wife, _mate_ —but Rao? Rao is—  
  
Rao is _everything_.  
  
She looks back at Astra to find her aunt watching her, gauging her like she does with puzzles and tests. But she has no idea where to begin.   
Not the least of her questions being--Astra _is_ married. To Non. And yet Astra brought Jenna and not him (that part she understood; Non is _not_ welcome in their house any longer), and Jenna was acknowledged as if she was significant to Astra as well, though not named as husband or wife.  
  
But... Rao?  
  
“I’m sorry,” She says, head bowing, “I’m not sure what you mean by that.”  
  
“It’s alright.” Astra smiles wryly, and her hand on Kara’s shoulder is kind. “It’s not commonly taught. It’s thought of more as a defect than anything else.” Her gaze flickers to Kara and goes sharp. “It isn’t, but that’s another lesson.  
  
“You understand the purpose of the Codex, yes?”  
  
“Reproduction on Krypton was removed from the body and regulated by law in order to limit the threat of overpopulation, and the likelihood of defects.” Kara recites. One of Astra's eyebrows rises.  
  
"They have been thorough with you." Astra murmurs. "With our history, our society mistrusts the instincts of our evolution, and has removed them from our day-to-day life to the furthest degree possible. And not without reason.  
  
"But there are always those who do not take to these new laws of our nature as readily as others. I am one. Jenna is one. Your mother is one."  
  
Kara waits expectantly. After a moment, Astra laughs, bitter and sudden, in a way that makes Kara’s chest hurt, makes her want to hug Astra, but the way she’s standing, staring into her wine, she doesn’t think she should.  
  
"Jenna is my Rao, and I am Krypton. I’m held in her orbit, and all life on me is shaped by her presence. I move through the seasons, through day and night and winter and summer, at her proximity or her distance. I may come alive or become as silent as winter in the mountains, all because of her. I may burn, or I may freeze. But I am whatever she needs me to be. Whatever she _makes_ of me."  
  
There’s a tone in her voice that Kara’s never heard before, warm and low like the words are coming up from somewhere inside her; voice soft, measured as always, but strained, too, like the words or the emotions behind them want to tumble out. Still, she holds herself with military perfection, only her voice and the glass of wine to give her away.  
  
Astra looks up from her glass, out over Argo City, that wry smile still on her face, and Kara thinks she sees something glitter in her eyes. Finally, she looks at Kara. "You should not be learning this from me, little one. After all, I am tainted by it."  
  
Kara doesn’t want to think of her aunt like that. _Refuses_ to think of her aunt like that. It makes the roiling feeling in her stomach worse and it makes her thoughts feel dizzy, fragmented.  
  
Instead, she wraps her arms around Astra’s waist and buries her face in Astra’s side, and the harder she hangs on, the more the tumult in her head lessens.  
  
"I want to be like you, Aunt Astra." Kara says, because it’s true, and because Astra is worthy of it.  
  
Astra laughs, brittle like broken glass, and it’s the first time Kara hears that tone in her voice—but far from the last. When she speaks, her voice is rough and soft with feeling.  
  
"Whatever you are, little one, be strong it it. This is the dance of the stars." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: So I basically this Kryptonian is all kinds of fucked up, because I had to go through and re-imagine what the hell ABO would look like in Kryptonian society. Did you know that vowel sounds in Kryptonian nouns change based on the “natural gender” of the noun? I laughed, too. 
> 
> So I basically went through and commandeered two vowels to create two other grammatical “genders” to represent the alpha/omega paradigm as separate from the beta masculine/feminine one (and the alpha/omega biology as variant from the beta biology; the alpha/omega biology being fluid/cyclic while the beta biology is static-ish, etc). 
> 
> The gist of it is that the omega is indicated by a vowel shift towards the “rao” vowel (“ow” sound), and the alpha is indicated by a shift towards the “iy” vowel (which I honestly have no idea how to pronounce; I don't read IPA). 
> 
> Both of them are considered “neutral” in canonical-ish Kryptonian, but “iy” is never used in the singular, as it indicates not gender-neutrality, but gender-all-inclusiveness (according to [this site](http://kryptonian.info/doyle/writing/vowels-advanced.html) (see the section on "The Vowels and Gendered Nouns"), and _Rao_ is… well, you’re familiar with that. Sun, god, center of Kryptonian thought, etc. 
> 
> Yes I realize this is stupid and overdone and kinda cheesy, but it’s an alternate universe with alternate biology, and I ended up having to do some world building (oops). For one word. 
> 
> Feel free to yell at me about how stupid gender is in the comments.
> 
> And, if you didn't catch that, Astra is the Kryptonian equivalent of an alpha, and Jenna is the equivalent of an omega.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kara gets introduced to this _wild new world_ , and Alex gets in a fistfight.

Her very first day at school is when she sees "the S" for the first time (eventually, she has to just refer to it as "the S", because it’s not her family’s coat of arms, not anymore, not like this).   
  
Amid the sea of kids, there’s one bright-blue t-shirt and her eyes zero in on the familiar crest.   
  
She’s so excited to see it—what else could it mean?—she’s over there in front of him before she even realizes she’s moving.  
  
" _Ehrosh bem_." She says.   
  
His eyes widen. He has curly hair. "Whoa."   
  
She tries again. Confusion.   
  
"What… what are you _saying_ , dude?"   
  
She looks at him, looks at el mayarah, looks back at his face.   
  
"Uhhh… yeah, that’s my Superman shirt?"   
  
Kara frowns. Wearing el mayarah was a _privilege_. There were _tests_ one had to pass to be worthy of wearing that symbol, so prominently.   
  
Alex finally makes it over to her side and pries her away from the boy.   
  
"Sorry about that," She apologizes, a little frantically, "She’s new here. ESL. She likes your shirt."   
  
//   
  
Alex sighs when Kara stays attached to her side at lunchtime, and lets Kara sit next to her. The cafeteria is hot, noisy—the lack of privacy or semblance of order is overwhelming. Kara honestly doesn't know how anyone could eat there.   
  
But luckily, Alex doesn’t sit in the cafeteria; she sits outside, along the brick front of the school, with her friends.   
  
Kara can tell almost immediately that Alex wishes she wasn’t there. It’s in the way she doesn’t turn all the way to face her, the stillness in her face when she’s addressing her, stiffness like she’s in pain.   
  
Kara sits by herself the next day; finds a spot by herself and listens for the bell that signals the end of lunch.   
  
There’s a tread coming towards her from the direction of the cafeteria; more of a trudge, really. She can see the vague shape of their body through the building. It looks like—is it—  
  
The boy who was wearing el mayarah (not el mayarah, Alex had explained, and then Jeremiah; it’s just "Superman", just "the S") comes around the corner. He’s not wearing "the S" today. He sees her and breaks out in a smile. Kara forces a smile back.   
  
"Hey," The boy says, "I’m Steve." He sits down next to her.   
  
"Hello. My name is Kara."   
  
He laughs, but it’s a little strained. "Right," he says, "Nice to meet you, Kara."   
  
"You as well, Steve." There’s a moment of silence after that. Steve takes a bite of his food.   
  
"So, uh, you like Superman, huh?"   
  
Kara considers. The phrase has almost no meaning to her in this context. But she remembers Jeremiah’s instructions to not let anyone know about her connection to Kal-El. "I do not know him personally, but he is an important symbol of American values."   
  
He looks a little wide-eyed. "Riiiight." He picks at his food, studiously looking down.   
  
When he looks back up, there’s a different look on his face; careful, studiously blank, but there’s an excitement around the edges that makes Kara’s stomach twist uncomfortably.   
  
"So, uh, are you a beta or an omega?"   
  
//   
  
"Alex, what’s an alpha?"   
  
Instead of answering her, Alex stops cold, one hand coming up and hitting Kara’s shoulder. "Where’d you hear that?"   
  
“Steve sat with me at lunch and asked me if I was a beta or omega. I didn’t understand, so I asked him to explain, and he told me—“   
  
“Steve. Steve, like, Superman-shirt Steve?” Kara nods. Alex says a series of words that Kara isn’t familiar with.   
  
"No one should be asking you about that, okay? I know Mom and Dad probably want to keep it PG, but… What did he even say?”   
  
Kara tells her.   
  
Alex lets out a similar string of unfamiliar words. “Fucking creep.” She blows out a breath. “I can’t believe I’m about to have to do this.”   
  
As far as verbal explanations go, it was one of the better ones Kara ever got.   
  
//   
  
The talk with Jeremiah and Eliza later is similar to the one with Alex, but with less swearing, and Jeremiah is able to confirm that Kryptonian reproduction is similar if not the same. And it feels—  
  
It feels like getting a piece of Krypton back, at first. She draws parallels, between _zrhiymin_ and alphas, between _zrhaomin_ and omegas, in her mind.   
  
And then she goes back to school, and she hears it in _everything_ people say. She hears the tone of their voice, the crude words they use to describe it. The way they casually use euphemisms for omegas to degrade and insult each other.   
  
She remembers Astra’s description of her mate.   
  
No; no, the two are nothing alike.   
  
//   
  
To make things worse, after Eliza and Jeremiah have a talk with the school principal about Steve’s behavior, the rumors start.   
  
And then Alex gets in a fight. Because some boy who Kara doesn’t even know makes a comment in passing and even before she can process that Alex is moving, there’s fists swinging.   
  
The first time it happens, Eliza and Jeremiah are shocked, but ultimately it comes down to—This isn’t the way to handle this kind of thing. Alex sulks. Kara finds her and breathes frosty air onto her raw knuckles.   
  
But the rumors don’t stop; so, neither do the fights. But Alex wins most of them, and the boys are too embarrassed to complain to the principal or hall monitor or teacher. She only gets caught twice, but the black eyes and scraped knuckles are harder to hide from Eliza and Jeremiah.   
  
After the incident with the flying, and Jeremiah takes a new job, he pulls Alex aside one night. Kara tunes in partway through, but she catches—  
  
“—If anything happens to me, you need to take care of your mom and Kara, alright? Look out for them the way I look out for you."

"Dad… what are you saying?"   
  
"I’m saying that I’m gonna be traveling a lot with this new job, and anything can happen. I'm saying your mom is strong, and she’ll be alright, but she’s my mate, and an alpha, and it’s _hard_ to lose your mate. It’s not all heats and knotting."   
  
"Ew, _Dad_."

Jeremiah chuckles. "The two of you are so alike. It’s probably why you have such a hard time, sometimes. Whatever happens, if I’m not there to referee between the two of you, try to remember she loves you, okay?"   
  
Alex doesn’t reply, but Kara can tell from the rustle and the hug that Jeremiah pulls her into that she nods.   
  
"That’s my brave girl." He says. "And that means no more fighting, okay? You can’t look out for Kara if you get suspended."   
  
Alex shuffles. "I’ll try."   
  
"You’ll _do_." Jeremiah replies, but his tone is still amused.   
  
Looking back, that might’ve been the night before he left for South America. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PSA: Steve's behavior is predatory. 
> 
> This announcement brought to you by six years of younger!me just wanting a friend, and then realizing far too late that my "friends" were fucking creeps. Even for seven-year-olds.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kara gets a liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiittle bit dissociated in this chapter, just as a heads-up for anyone who might have triggers with that.

To make things even worse, it seems like everything she tries to hold onto just… disintegrates in her hands. Her pillow. Her blanket. She watches a rock crumble to dust in her grip.  
  
And yet, according to Jeremiah, she can't _use_ her strength. Has to live normally.  Has to live _human_.  
  
But what else is this strength good for? She tries to hold it in, and it comes out in the wrong places, at the wrong times, like her grief.  
  
//  
  
Things start to get… very quiet. Like, sometimes, Kara will be in the middle of doing something, and realize that she isn't sure how much time has passed, or what the air feels like on her skin. She just knows she can't breathe, can't move, can't _exist_ , because the way her body exists is _too much_.  
  
But her chest burns like a planet, shattering silently into space.  
  
She barely talks anymore at dinner. Eliza's and Jeremiah's questions puzzle her; she answers with something rote, polite and appropriate, but she can tell they're still troubled.  
  
Jeremiah praises her for not breaking anything for such a long time—the longest stretch she's ever gone.  
  
Kara looks at her hands. Like a wisp, she thinks, a fraction of what she's capable of.  
  
"Hey." Alex came into the room while she wasn't paying attention. It's almost like the lead glasses are working, she thinks. She's at human levels now.  
  
"Hey." Kara says, and the word falls easily from her mouth. Easily and emptily.  
  
Alex sits down on her own bed, facing Kara. She frowns, looking at Kara's hands. Kara might be irritated, but she also feels like she's observing from a very large distance—herself, Alex observing her, Kara observing herself and seeing Alex observing her. Mirrors on mirrors.  
  
“—Wrong, isn't there?"  
  
"What?" Kara asks. She _heard_ Alex's voice—she remembers the sound of her voice, but not the words she made. "I'm sorry."  
  
"It's okay." Alex reaches out to touch Kara's hands, still open, wrists resting on her knees. Kara flinches; she breaks everything she touches. _Too much_ rings like a bell through her head. Alex freezes, pulls back.  
  
"Hey." She says. "Is it okay if I try to hold your hand?"  
  
Kara feels so, so far away. She doesn't know if she should say yes or no. She nods.  
  
Alex moves over and sits down next to her. Carefully, carefully, she places her hand in one of Kara's. Warm. Her skin is warm. Soft pulse of blood in her veins. Echo of motion, heartbeat.  
  
It's all so clinical, though. So distant. So _thought_. Kara has to struggle to hold the sensation close, and then it loses all meaning.  
  
"You're holding your breath." Alex says, and Kara realizes—she's right. "Every time someone gets close to you."  
  
"I'm trying not to break things," Kara answers; it doesn't occur to her to lie, "It's hard. I don't mean to." She looks at the bandage on Alex's arm, and her eyes start to fill.  
  
Alex touches the bandage. "Hey. It's okay. That wasn't your fault."  
  
"But it was. If I hadn't tried to rescue that woman—“  
  
"Then they'd both be dead." Kara swallows. How can she live with that, live with letting people hurt—letting people _die_ —when she can _do something_? "And they're not. You didn't throw that car door at me."  
  
Kara isn't sure if there's a difference.  
  
"I can't make myself be normal." Kara lets out in what sounds like a sob.  
  
"Yeah. You're my weird sister." Alex says wryly. The warmth in her eyes sparks off a rush of emotion even sharper than she remembers it being.  
  
"How am I ever gonna—“ Kara chokes off, and Alex shushes her. Warmth wraps around her palm and threads through her fingers.  
  
She looks down and sees Alex's hand intertwined with hers, and she freezes again—she notices, this time, holds carefully still, even her breathing, focusing everything on controlling her strength—  
  
Alex squeezes, and Kara can feel it. She can feel it.  
  
"You're not hurting me, okay?"  
  
Kara stares. She's not. She takes a breath. Still no pain from Alex. Another breath. Muscles loosen in her wrist and her hand that she didn't even realize she was holding stiff.  
  
Her fingers flex slightly. "You’re fine." Kara swallows. She can’t make herself close her fingers any further. She looks at Alex, a little wide-eyed. Alex nods, and leans over to hug her with her other arm.  
  
Kara lets her, soaking up the warmth, and the trust. It doesn’t fix everything, but she’s not so far away anymore.  
  
//  
  
When she first came to Earth, _sex_ was the last thing on Kara’s mind.  
  
But now, apparently, it’s everything; the key to having a place in this society, to _being human_.  
  
Kara… never was very good at being human.  
  
//  
  
To make matters worse, the system on Earth is… contradictory at best.  
  
Most humans won’t start presenting til they’re sixteen, or even older, according to Alex, and according to Clark, _he_ didn't present as an omega until his twenties. So middle school and even most of high school is about finding a role and then performing it as well as you can before someone else assigns one to you.  
  
And even then, people will probably decide what they think you’re going to be anyways.  
  
//  
  
Alex? Alpha.  
  
Alex? Bloody knuckles, straight-A grades, scholarships—the stars. Kara’s lucky to have a sister like that, everyone says. Someone who loves her and protects her like that.  
  
Kara?  
  
Kara _could_ out-muscle every annoying alpha-type who stands around scratching their junk and making lewd remarks when the teacher’s pretending not to hear anything. She knows star charts by heart and she could probably bump human science a hundred years ahead just with what little she remembers of her education on Krypton. When she draws, or paints, she uses the ideograms she remembers and pours her memories onto the page, or canvas; she fills sketchbooks and all those little cheap-y canvas squares she can buy--with _Krypton_.  
  
She keeps them all stashed in a plastic tub, under her bed. It’s no sun crystal, that's for sure. She doesn’t tell anyone, not even Alex, because after Jeremiah’s death, it became all about hiding, nothing out of the ordinary, everything normal and human.  
  
Instead, the only superpower she’s allowed to display is, apparently, an unstoppable metabolism.  
  
Instead, this culture of individuals, of competition and appetite and backstabbing, makes her shrink inside and want to run away, even though she knows she’ll win. It makes her feel lonely in a way that she never felt before.  
  
And it makes her wonder, too: Is this what it was like on Krypton? Was Astra, so honest and fierce, lying to protect her? Is it because she’s Kryptonian, or because she’s not an alpha?  
  
Or is it because there’s just something wrong with her?  
  
Kara has never been very good at "normal". Not even if she wanted to be.  
  
//  
  
The first time Kara picks up CatCo Magazine, she’s already done plenty of research on this bizarre hierarchy she’s found herself adrift in.  
  
But this issue finds itself in the spotlight for kicking off a series on omegas in the workplace; Kara devours it, and then goes searching for more.  
  
“ _Beta positivity_ ”. " _Pheromones: What are they, really?_ " Sometimes, it’s little more than a page out of the entire magazine.  
  
But, that’s how Kara ends up with a subscription to CatCo Mag throughout her high school years. The fashion tips and the segments on dating are incidental. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The pieces finally start to fall into place. And then epically fall apart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alex is a senior, and Kara is a junior. In high school.

Alex is already at her locker when Kara fights her way from last period to meet her.   
  
She’s moving slowly, more slowly than usual; Kara takes her in and feels worry surge. She looks pale, through the fall of her hair, and Kara can hear her heartbeat, fast and shallower than usual.   
  
“Alex?”   
  
Alex’s head jerks up, and then she relaxes when she sees Kara. “Hey.”   
  
“Are you okay?”   
  
Alex looks away, refocusing on her backpack, and nods. Definitely not okay.   
  
Kara bites her lip—and then catches the scent of something faint, something that rankles. She looks at Alex’s hands. Her knuckles are red and swollen. There’s shadows of rust-red on the back of her hand, between her fingers.   
  
Blood.   
  
Kara’s eyes jump to her face, looking for any bruises, any cuts, any sign that she’s hurt.   
  
“Alex… did you get in a fight?” She hasn’t been in a fight since… junior year? Almost a year, now.   
Alex stops. “Yeah.”   
  
“What—what happened?” Last time, it was someone picking on an omega. People have, for the most part, stopped picking on Kara. But it’s like Alex has had the protective impulse drilled into her, and even though Kara generally doesn’t need someone to go to bat for her in a fistfight anymore, Alex still has leftover energy for it. Takes it personally when people took advantage of other people, or bullied them.   
  
“Brad…” She swallows. “Brad’s in rut.”   
  
Kara feels her eyes narrow. “What did he do?” She starts putting together the pallor, the way Alex seems curled in on herself—  
  
Alex shakes her head. “He was just being annoying. But he wouldn’t get out of my way or get his hands off me.” She flashes a little smile at Kara. “I might’ve broken his nose.”   
  
Kara snorts. “Good,” She says, with a surprising amount of venom, even to her.   
  
“I just feel kinda sick. I’m gonna catch hell from Eliza if I get detention or suspended last semester of my senior year.” She rolls her eyes and pitches her voice high and mocking. “‘You can’t look out for Kara if you get suspended, Alex. If you get suspended, you won’t get into college, and if you don’t get into college, you’ll never get a job, and then you and Kara will both _starve_.”   
  
Kara rolls her eyes. “I’ll be fine. It’s not like I’m gonna _starve_ if you’re not home _right at three-thirty_.”   
  
Alex flashes another little smile at her, and Kara feels herself starting to relax. “That’s not what you said yesterday.”   
  
Kara shrugs. “I can heat up a pizza in thirty seconds.”   
  
“You can _eat_ a pizza in thirty seconds.”   
  
“Thirty-two.” Kara corrects her, mock-hurt.   
  
Alex holds up her hands in surrender. “My bad.”   
  
She reaches back down, and Kara catches a glimpse of her battered knuckles again. Instinctively, she reaches out and grabs one of her hands, brushing her thumbs over them. She leans over and blows gently on them—not frost, not exactly, but enough to chill the inflamed tissue.   
  
Alex lets her, but— “Kara, don’t _do_ that here.”   
  
Kara drops her hand and smiles apologetically. Alex’s face is soft.   
  
“People will think it’s just hormones.” She glosses over the use of her powers and shifts back to talking about the fight. That’s all people ever think it is—hormones. Pheromones.   
  
Looking back, it was obvious that there had been _some_ common awareness of people like Astra and Jenna on Krypton, if not the exact terminology, but this lack of discipline would _not_ have been tolerated. Even from an alpha in rut.   
  
It may not have been _perfect_ , but it was definitely better.   
  
“God, I hope so.”   
  
“You want help with any of that?” Kara indicates Alex’s backpack.   
  
Alex shakes her head. “No, I got it.”   
  
“Okay. Can I walk out to the bus with you?”   
  
“You _always_ walk out to the bus with me. We live together, remember?”   
  
“Right. Sorry.” Kara blushes and looks at the floor.   
  
“Nerd.” Alex sounds so _tired_ , though, and she leans her shoulder into Kara’s. Warmth blossoms through her chest, melting away any lingering anxiety for a moment. Kara wraps an arm around Alex, and Alex sags against her minutely. They walk out to the bus like that.   
  
//   
  
“Alex?” Kara cracks the door to Alex’s room later that afternoon, after changing out of her school clothes into something more comfortable. Alex is sitting on her bed, knees pulled to her chest. She turns to look at Kara, and the look in her eyes hits her square in the chest—fogged over with pain and dull with sick. Even from here, Kara can see the shivers running through her. “Alex!”   
  
She moves to sit down next to Alex, and Alex leans into her. Kara wraps her up without a second’s hesitation. Rao, she’s _hot_.   
  
“Pajamas were cold.” Alex says through gritted teeth. Kara makes a soft sound and shifts so that she’s facing Alex a little more; more contact, more warmth.   
  
After a moment, Kara realizes that this isn’t illness. And this isn’t like most of Alex’s heats, either.   
  
“Alex, are you… _are_ you taking suppressants?” Kara asks softly. Gingerly. Alex has always hated them. But she’s always been good about taking them, too. At least as far as Kara knew.   
  
If standard beta suppressants aren’t working, then…   
  
“Yeah.” Silence. That says everything.   
  
“Oh.” Alex buries her face against Kara’s collarbone. “Hey. Hey, I gotcha. It’s okay. C’mere.”   
  
She coaxes Alex under the covers and crawls in with her. Alex keeps shivering, and something in Kara’s chest feels like it’s cracking open—Alex, who keeps them safe, keeps them together, who keeps _Kara_ safe, is suddenly so sick.   
  
The first time one of the Danvers—it was Alex, actually—caught the flu, Kara went into a full-on panic; living on a planet that had, for the most part, been rid of disease, had left her unprepared for it. She was low-key convinced that Alex was _dying_ , and they’d just started to become friends, and within a year of losing her planet?   
  
At least Jeremiah had still been there, Eliza taking care of Alex while Jeremiah explained diseases on Earth to Kara, calmly telling her that yes, Alex was sick _now_ , but she’d get better soon.   
  
No matter what he said, though, she still went through the whole gauntlet of emotions—worry, then terror, and then the dull gnawing fear as the days went on that no matter what Jeremiah said, Alex might never be the same again.   
  
But she was, eventually. Kara watched Alex rally, and at some point, became convinced that nothing could stop her, not really.   
  
Alex groused and complained at Kara to stop poking her and bringing her soup, she wasn’t dying. Grudgingly, she accepted Kara’s small, silent presence at the foot of her bed. On the floor. Finally, “Oh my god, Kara, get up here. You’re not gonna _catch_ it.”   
  
It didn’t stop Alex from catching the flu again next year, of course, and then, she went through the whole set of emotions again—amplified by the fact that Jeremiah had just died. But it was never quite to the same degree again, even when Alex was curled over the toilet heaving, cold sweat and hot skin—Kara had seen Alex come out the other side. If anyone was going to, it’d be her.   
  
So she _knows_ Alex will be fine. This is something that passes. But holding Alex in her arms while she curls up and shivers _so hard_ makes Kara ache. It makes Kara ache because she _knows_ that Alex hates being sick, or weak, or having someone try to take care of her. And Kara, of all people, who she’s been taking care of for years now—what could Kara possibly have to offer her? Especially with the sudden revelation that Alex isn’t just in heat, she’s an _omega_? Kara _still_ doesn’t know what her status is.   
  
But she wraps her arms around Alex and pulls her close. It’s the least Kara can do, after everything. Alex will get through this, too, and Kara doesn’t know what she can offer her, if it’ll be enough—but she _does_ know that physical contact is something omegas need.   
  
No matter what, Alex is still the strongest person Kara knows.   
  
One of Alex’s hands comes to rest on Kara’s arm, squeezing, and something loosens in Kara’s chest. Kara tucks her face against the side of Alex’s head, her nose almost in the soft spot below Alex’s ear, and tries to steady her breathing. Slow her heart rate and her worry and be completely stable for Alex.   
  
Amazingly, Alex’s shivers start to subside. And as they do, she starts to relax in Kara’s arms—and Kara becomes aware of how _warm_ Alex is. Feverish. Not sharply, but it floods the space between them, around them, sinks into Kara’s bones, and Kara finds _herself_ relaxing, too. Alex is out of the woods.   
  
Kara can’t believe it’s working.   
  
She’s not sure how long they lie there like that, warmth suffusing everything, Alex relaxing into Kara by degrees. But the shadows start to move across the wall and dim, and Kara’s whole body is humming with the knowledge that Alex—Alex who bristles whenever Eliza tells her to take her meds, Alex who doesn’t sleep for three days straight between work, school, and homework, Alex who comes in after _that_ on two hours’ sleep and _aces_ her AP exams, then rolls right into work—Alex is letting Kara hold her. Is nestling back against Kara, her breathing slowing.   
  
Still, she occasionally whines softly and curls in on herself. It takes Kara awhile to process it—cramps. She’s not sure what to do, so she just squeezes Alex that little bit tighter when she feels the tension rising in Alex’s body.   
  
Kara’s heart skips. And then stops, because Alex just slid her hand over Kara’s—not to move Kara’s hand off, but to cover it with her own, and move Kara’s hand down just below her navel, pressing Kara’s open palm gently over the aching muscles, her thumb stroking softly over the back.   
  
It’s like a quiet explosion of fireworks behind her eyelids, in her chest. Lower. Kara closes her eyes and nuzzles the back of Alex’s neck so softly, and struggles to remember how to breathe. Her skin, the scent of her hair—Kara could get addicted. Maybe she already is. Thinks that should be a problem, but can’t for the life of her remember why. There’s just this, the soft intimacy of Alex’s hand on hers, the way Alex accepts her touch, leans her head forward just slightly to let Kara nuzzle into her neck.   
  
Alex lets out another long breath, and her shoulder drops slightly, stretching her neck a little more. Something flares sharply in Kara’s chest at that.   
  
Her heart races as she moves just slightly to nuzzle the curve of Alex’s neck. Alex lets out a near-inaudible purr and practically melts over Kara’s other arm where it curves underneath and around her side, into the curve of Kara’s shoulder.   
  
The centimeters of movement from nuzzling to pressing her lips to Alex’s skin feel like the longest, barest distance Kara’s crossed since that long walk up to her first day of seventh grade.   
  
Alex’s breath hitches, and for a moment Kara freezes—and then Alex presses back against Kara more intentionally, tilting her head, baring her neck, and Kara makes a soft sound and lowers her mouth back down, tasting Alex’s skin.   
  
After a few moments, she feels a hand in her hair. She raises her head as Alex twists to face her, eyes dark and dancing over Kara’s face hungrily, and then Alex is tugging Kara’s head down and kissing her.   
  
—And then the door slams downstairs, making them both jump hard. Eliza. Alex jerks back, eyes wide; face still flushed and heavy-lidded, but shocked, like she just woke up from a dream.   
  
“Ohgod.” Alex says, pulling her hand away and grabbing at the covers. “I—I have to go.”   
  
“O—okay?” Kara’s stomach twists painfully. Alex pushes off the bed. “Alex—?”   
  
Alex pauses at the door to the room, but doesn’t turn back. “I—I need to talk to Mom. About… about meds.” Then she slips through the door and is gone.   
  
“Okay.” Kara says to the closing door in a small voice. _She_ feels cold now; inexplicably and suddenly. Adrift, with that feeling that she gets when she misjudges her strength and breaks something on accident.   
  
She has a feeling that that’s what just happened.   
  
//  
  
“Alex?” She calls softly to Alex’s closed door later that evening.   
  
“I’m asleep.” Alex’s voice is _not_ sleepy—though it is rough-edged and stuffy, like she’s been crying. Kara huffs and lowers her glasses.   
  
Alex is in bed, facing the wall opposite from the door.   
  
“Alex, are you okay?”   
  
“I’m _fine_ , Kara. Let me sleep.”   
  
Kara tries the doorknob, careful of her strength—her and doorknobs never got along well to begin with—and it’s locked.   
  
“Alex—“ There are tears in her eyes that she can’t quite fathom why they’re there—only that this hurts worse than anything, and there’s a panic rising in her throat that she’s somehow ruined _everything_ , because they’re supposed to be _sisters_ , and— “Alex, did I do something wrong?”   
  
There’s a long silence. Then, “No,” Alex’s voice comes soft and hoarse.   
  
“Then what’s wrong?” Her voice cracks on _wrong_ , and she can’t help it.   
  
Another pause. “I’m sick, Kara. And—and that… it can’t happen again.” The steel is back in Alex’s voice, even though Kara can hear it shaking. Kara feels like something is tearing at her guts.   
  
“Oh.” She says, and goes back to her room, her head spinning.   
  
//  
  
Alex is alright in a few days; Eliza says she’s sick. Alex says she’s sick. That’s what she tells everyone at school, too.   
  
But Kara lies awake that first night and listens to Alex shiver—chills and tears both—and her whole body _hurts_.   
  
It’s not just Alex who got answers tonight. Kara knows what _she_ is, now.   
  
Aunt Astra’s words come back to her: _Day and night, winter and summer; whatever she needs me to be_.   
  
She always figured it was the overly elaborate language that Krypton used to couch sacred (or primitive and indelicate) subjects in—the distance that they put between themselves and their bloody primal past. But it doesn’t feel like much of a stretch to say: Her center is in the next room over, facing away, and Kara wishes with every cell of her body that she could bring the sun back to her.   
  
Her sun is over in the next room, facing away, and it’s a long, long night that begins that evening. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kryptonian suppressants, the Fortress of Solitude, and Astra is still painfully relevant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for some misogynistic language at the end of the chapter. 
> 
> Also, the angst continues. 
> 
> Also also, sorry for the late update this week; I've been recovering from the gross that's going around.

“ _Kara? What’s wrong?_ ” Clark picks up on the second ring, but his voice is confused. Kara can’t blame him; she doesn’t usually call anymore. 

“I—I think—“ _I screwed up._

_Breathe, Danvers._

“—I think I’m—“ It all feels too big and too small at once to say it in English. “— _cheh-zrhiymin._ ” It's not _right_ , but it's the only words she knows for it. 

“ _What?_ ” Clark’s Kryptonian is mostly limited to reading, and basic or everyday subjects. Appropriate ones. 

“I…” Kara swallows. “IthinkIpresentedasanalpha." It comes out all in a rush. 

She can practically hear Clark struggling to parse what she’s saying over the line, but she can’t make herself say it again. 

“ _Oh!_ ” Clark says, and then, drawn-out, “ _Oh._ ” 

“Yeah.” Is all Kara can say. 

“ _Um._ ” She can hear him scratching his head. “ _You—you_ think _you presented as alpha? I mean—it’d be pretty… obvious._ ” 

"I mean—“ Kara swallows. "I know. I know I did." _What the hell, Danvers_. "I did." _I did. I really did._ Her resolve firms over and she somehow manages to say it at normal speed without dying of embarrassment. "I presented as alpha." 

“ _Oh._ ” Clark says. 

_Oh._

_Shit._

It all suddenly feels very real. 

“ _Um. Okay._ ” She hears Clark run his hand through his hair. “ _What—was there something you needed? That came out wrong, sorry. Was there something you wanted my help with? Did you wanna talk? It’s whatever you need._ ” 

"Talking would be good." Slightly less rushed than her initial confession. The underlying thought bubbles to the surface. "And—and suppressants. Do human ones work for me? Do human ones work for _you_?" 

“ _No, no. I had to synthesize some. I use stuff that’s available on this planet, but I have to synthesize the molecular structure at the Fortress._ ” 

The Fortress. Of Solitude. This is… this is superhero territory. _Superman_ territory. 

Kara is Kryptonian, but she’s just… Kara. There’s always been a line she didn’t cross, every night since that one flight with Alex that changed everything. 

She’s got abilities. Got strength. But she’s not a superhero. Not like Clark. A superhero wouldn’t have let Jeremiah die for her mistakes. 

Clark has never invited her to the Fortress. Never talked to her about it, really. She learned about it from Jeremiah and Alex and reading all about him in newspapers and magazines and—

Her cousin. The last piece of Krypton, tangible and real, other than her, on this planet. How could she _not_ want to know? 

She doesn’t want to ask. She knows the answer; her world and his can’t mix. It’s on the tip of her tongue; she can’t live like this, without suppressants, unmedicated, with her abilities. Doesn’t want to. 

Dangerous. She’s dangerous. 

“ _You wanna come with me to the Fortress?_ ” He asks finally. “ _It’ll be easier if Kelex can take a look at you there._ ” 

Kara nods. Doesn’t speak. Afraid that if she does, it’ll shatter the moment. She’ll have to go back to being Kara Danvers, pretend that everything is okay, this never happened. Isn’t happening. 

She realizes he can’t hear her nod, because the phone probably doesn’t pick up the sound of the movement, and swallows. “Yes.”

“ _Alright, I’ll be there as soon as I can._ ” Kara feels a weight lift off her chest—and a lightness in her stomach. She’s going to the _Fortress_. “ _Remember how to fly, kiddo?_ ” He asks. 

"I’ll remember." She promises. 

//

Kara’s heart feels like it’s beating on her tongue when they land at the Fortress; _she_ feels like a different person. 

She’d forgotten how it all felt. Using her strength. 

“Wow.” She laughs shakily, catching her breath. “That was _amazing_. You’re so fast. This is so _beautiful_.” 

Clark chuckles, and she looks over at him to see him breathing hard, too. “You’re not too bad yourself.” 

She kind of wishes she could bottle the feeling that swells in her chest at that. 

The Fortress itself is… 

A little piece of Krypton. Light and ice refracting like glass, arches and curves and straight lines. 

It’s not the same as Argo City’s winding organic-like buildings; but she can feel Clark moving towards Krypton through the ice he carved out. Reaching. 

"Here we are." Clark’s voice breaks her out of her thoughts. She feels a sting in her eyes and her hand comes away wet when she rubs them. "Kelex!" 

"Hello, Master Kal." 

"Kelex, we think that Kara is presenting as an alpha. D’you know anything about alpha suppressants on Krypton?" 

"Kara Zor-El, your cousin?" 

"Yes. She’s here with me. You can examine her if you like." 

Kara swallows as Kelex swoops toward her. She was _raised_ with these on Krypton—but suddenly, they feel as alien to her as the rest of this planet did when she first arrived. 

// 

Clark leaves for most of Kelex’s exam—he has some things he needs to research while he’s here, too. 

Which leaves Kara alone with Kelex. 

For her part, Kara doesn’t _get_ it. The longer she sits with her shock, her memories of the last three days, under Kelex’s gaze, while Kelex hums  
and works at a console to analyze the results of its readings. _Why_? Why her? Why alpha? 

Of all the things she thought, _this_ was definitely not one of them. Hell, she thought she might just be something else entirely. Wouldn’t be the first time she’s been an alien. But _alpha_? 

No one had ever pegged her for that before. "Beta at best”—that one stuck with her. Mrs. Anderson hadn’t known Kara could hear her, of course, but that was her assessment of Kara’s "decent talent, uninspired work". 

Had there been an itch of irritation at that? (More than an itch; way more than an itch. She’d had to close her eyes to block the burn of her own gaze when she saw heat waves wiggle in her vision and the burn of tears when it all went blurry.) But who _wouldn’t_ feel frustrated and hurt? Especially knowing that they could do _better_ , if they didn’t have to hide everything, every day. 

Wouldn’t they? 

She thinks of the alphas she knows—Brad, boys like him. She thinks of the alphas she’s seen. Possessive, aggressive, competitive. 

Aunt Astra had been a general, she remembers suddenly. Her mother was an adjudicator. Hadn’t there been a place for them on Krypton? 

"Kelex?" She asks hesitantly. 

"Yes, Kara." Kelex’s head swivels completely around while its hands continue to work on whatever it’s doing at the console. 

"Any progress on those results?" 

"They should be ready momentarily." 

Kara frowns. "You can’t just… tell what my status is?" 

"There are a number of variations within the physical sexes, and Master Kal did request a full analysis." 

"Oh." She bites her tongue. "Anything… preliminary? By chance?" 

"You are displaying physical characteristics of the _shiyd_ phenotype, _iy_ -variant." 

"So I’m… an alpha?" 

"In Earth terms, yes." 

She sits for a few moments, until she can’t hold her next question in any longer. 

"What’s a _zrhiymin_?" She asks, using the word that Astra had used to describe herself all those years ago. Where was _that_ word in Kelex’s data archive? That red light and fierce dark gleam in Astra’s gaze, something like pride and tenderness all at once, while she looked into her wine and described… them? "What role did they play in our society?" 

" _Zrhiymin_." Kelex repeats mechanically, tilting its head. "Accessing data…” Kara holds her breath. 

" _Zrhiymin_ is an archaic Old High Kandorian term of endearment and status used to denote a mate of the _shiyd_ phenotype, _iy_ -variant.” Kelex finally answers. 

Kara blows out a breath that’s equal parts relieved and annoyed. "Yes, I know _that_ , but… who were they? What did they _do_? Did they… write any books, discover new technologies, discover new _planets_?" 

"There are any number of Kryptonian figures who achieved things in spite of their impediment." 

"Wait—Impediment? What?” 

"Both variants of the _shiyd_ phenotype experience heat cycles that interfere with social functioning—heightened aggressiveness, impaired decision-making, sexual urges, lowered inhibitions—and their tendency towards pair bonding is based upon genetic and hormonal compatibility, and could not be aligned easily with the Codex, which also had a social function. These instincts are vestigial and inconvenient reminders of a troubled evolutionary past, and they rendered many otherwise promising figures unfit for positions of power. 

"It is not properly understood why or how the trait emerges, and as such, has persisted, despite its disruptive and anti-social tendencies. However, with medication, the effects on social functioning can largely be ameliorated.” 

"Oh," Is all Kara can say. 

// 

Laying in her bed after getting home that night, her blood still humming from the flight, the feeling of the air on her skin, the feeling of being _above_ —for the first time in days, above the silence between her and the room next door; beyond it. 

_Unfit_. 

Her mother the judge. Her aunt the general. _Unfit_. 

Good enough for the Codex to allow her mother to marry into the House of El; an alliance between that house and the House of Ze. But unfit, without suppressants to make her more like the house she married into; to make _compatibility_ a non-issue, able to fulfill the will of her House. To keep her from wandering elsewhere, pulled by something even the Codex and generations of Kryptonian scientists couldn’t erase. 

Or, like Astra; marrying into one house and being allowed to take a mate. Whatever it took to quiet those instincts. 

There’s light-years of difference between what Kelex told her today and what Astra told her all those years ago; between _My Rao_ , _The dance of the stars themselves_ , and _Unfit_. Something to be “ameliorated”. 

Why wouldn’t Kelex have records of both? 

_Old High Kandorian_ , Kelex said, _Archaic_. 

So archaic, maybe, that no one had seen fit to save it from Krypton’s death; their history, their culture, their whole being as a species tied to this one planet, this one star, and their dance around each other. Doomed because of it. 

Somewhere out there, in the wreckage of Krypton, there’s her answers—Destroyed, turned to so much dust, shattered along with her old life. Dead, with the rest of her family. Any secrets Astra kept perished along with her, and the people like her. 

There’s just Kara, her fists curling in the comforter, blood hammering in her veins, heart on her tongue, _aching_. 

And then the thought occurs to her—what if Astra was lying? Or what if Astra was _wrong_? 

It wouldn’t have been the first or only thing Astra was so very wrong about. 

// 

Going back to school afterwards is a special kind of hell. 

Before her visit to the Fortress, she could call up the memory of that night, that conversation on the balcony with Astra, and imagine that Krypton may have been stuffy, but they valued civility and fair treatment according to social station. That they wouldn’t have let omegas, or their equivalent, be treated this way; they wouldn’t have had to fight like Alex has to prove her worth, to keep their hands _off_ her. That their alphas treated their omegas and their duties the way Astra spoke of Jenna—like they thought of themselves as part of something _greater_ than themselves, instead of a bag of instincts and desires to be catered to. 

Instead, all of them—alphas and omegas both—were only considered “fully evolved” with suppressants. 

Instead, _this_ is what she inherited. 

_“—bitch is in heat—”_

_“C’mon, babe, I got what you need.”_

_“C’mon, babe, I know you wanna feel good.”_

_“—bitch—”_

_“C’mon, babe. You smell so good.”_

_“C’mon, bitch, let me show you what it’s supposed to feel like.”_


	7. Chapter 7

The next few weeks are an agonizing mix of terror and numbness.   
  
She doesn't tell anyone about her visit to the Fortress—not Eliza, not even _Alex_.   
  
She avoids Eliza as much as she can (easy, with the hours she works), but avoiding Alex is going to be harder.   
  
Until Alex stops hanging out with her.  
  
She talks a lot about studying, and scholarships, and work, and hanging out with other friends who are graduating soon—but when she gets home, sometimes as late as ten or eleven at night, instead of staying up til two or three with Kara, watching their TV shows on DVR, she just goes to bed.   
  
At first, it’s a relief. Like she doesn’t have to face what she did—what they did, but whose fault is it, really? She didn’t _stop_ , didn’t think, and she knows now that she should have. She should have. And it’s easier to just not see her, and hide in her room with her guilt and confusion, than it is to look Alex in the face and wonder how badly she hurt her.   
  
And then _ask_ , because if she asks, if she says _anything_ , the whole thing is going to spill out of her all at once.   
  
But it goes on. And on.   
  
And on.   
  
//  
  
She thinks, sometimes, that she didn't actually leave the Fortress. That she's still there, under Kelex's watchful gaze, frozen at the moment where everything broke.   
  
_Unfit_.   
  
She walks through hallways. She rides the bus. She does homework. She even manages to smile and laugh. But there's only one thing she hears, one thing she remembers from that whole time:   
  
_Unfit_.   
  
_Anti-social_.   
  
_Defect_.   
  
She walks through the hallways. She rides the bus. She even manages to smile and laugh. She watches her TV shows and listens to her music.   
  
But she does it alone. In the silence between her and the room next door, the shared wall. The emptiness. Even when Alex is there, the place seems to have the weight and mystery of a black hole. An emotional event horizon.   
  
Sometimes, she catches a glimpse of the inside of the room, and is surprised at how mundane it looks. How normal. Did she re-arrange things? Kara doesn't remember it looking like that. Doesn't remember the exact shade of the dresser or the way the knobs are cut. The shirts Kara sees thrown over the wood and hanging off the bedposts don't seem familiar. Is this really Alex's room? Does she even really know Alex?   
  
She doesn't know anymore. In one evening, everything about them became completely different.   
  
The only thing she _knows_ lately is the color of the shadows and the sinking sun that afternoon, burned into her memory; warm, warm skin, soft under her hands and her mouth, the way Alex relaxed against her, letting her guard down, and not the exact _scent_ , but the way it made her _feel_ … It’s like nothing else is quite real.   
  
She wishes she could take it back. She wishes she'd never done it. She always tries to help and ends up making things worse.   
  
And maybe Eliza or Jeremiah or even Alex might tell her it's alright, she meant well. But it doesn't feel like that matters at all.   
  
Every time she looks at her, she hears Eliza's voice, saying, " _Take care of your sister, honey”. ”You're such a good sister, Alex”. ”You’re like two peas in a pod. Couldn't be closer if you’d been born sisters”._   
  
Kara honestly hadn’t considered that there was anything _more_ to it, anything _else_. They’re sisters; sisters are _them_ , to her. But now, she does think about it.   
  
And the more she thinks, the more she doesn’t know. She just knows that Alex is the thing that holds her to this Earth; not Kal, not Eliza, not Jeremiah, or her memories. Alex.   
  
Alex who held her hand and walked her through how to be present in the world, how to exist in it; who held her at night when she cried and didn’t seem even a little afraid that Kara might hurt her.   
  
And Kara can’t tell her this thing. Can’t ask her—what is this feeling, is this alright, for even a _hug_. Can’t bring herself to ask her.   
  
She spends the rest of the semester floating like snowflakes after an avalanche, and there's no hand to pull her back to the Earth, no anchor, no gravity.   
  
And then Alex leaves for college; there’s a summer program she’s taking, and it starts two weeks after school ends. Leaves without saying another word to her about what happened between them, and Kara is left alone with her panic and Alex’s silence and the endless blue of the Midvale horizon on the water and the tide coming in; alone with the Arctic cold creeping in and nothing to warm her, nothing to tell her it’ll ever get better.   
  
//  
  
Even suppressed, her next heat is one of the worst three days of her life on Earth. And she's been through junior high school.   
  
This time, she knows. She knows that it's heat, knows even before she gets hard, because she feels so lost and lonely, it feels like someone's cut into her chest and taken something away from her. Like every cell in her body is turned towards National City, wherever Alex is, out in those lights. Her Rao. She knows when she wakes up with Kryptonian phrases on her tongue that would make her blush to say out loud, awake. Not just because they’re explicit, but because they’re _beyond_ intimate.   
  
She curls up in her bed and brings her second pillow to her chest, hanging onto it for dear life. This heat is a pure spike of want that goes through her and through her and it’s not one thing or another, not physical or emotional--it’s _everything_.   
  
The realization hits her—this is ten, twenty, a hundred times worse than anything she’s experienced before.   
  
But this is the only time Alex hasn’t been there for it.   
  
It’s hard to sort out; there’s so much she has to hurt over, so much that human child psych and Kryptonian science can’t even begin to account for, or predict. Who knows if a given night “belongs” to her grief over Krypton, over her mother and father, over Jeremiah, over everything she should’ve been—over what she got instead?   
  
But does it really matter? Because Alex was there for all of them. Or enough of the ones that counted.   
  
All that time. All those nights spent shoulder-to-shoulder. Curled up together. Falling asleep on the couch, Alex's mattress, Kara's bed. Their beds. How many times had they already gone through this together, before that one afternoon?   
  
Her phone lights up. She doesn’t want to move. Finally, she heaves a sigh and uncurls one arm, wishing that she’d gotten telekinesis instead of just flight when she came to Earth. She teases it towards her with her fingertips until she can pick it up. Pushes down the ache that floods her chest because no matter who it is, it’s never gonna be the one person she wants to hear from.   
  
She blinks. Twice. Three times. Rubs her eyes. The name on the text doesn’t change.   
  
It’s Alex.   
  
Her hand is _shaking_ (of course it is, because Alex has always made her stronger, but right now, right now—Alex is the only one who’s been able to make her weak like this, since she came to Earth— _Don’t be a melancholy dipstick, Danvers_ ), but she manages not to break her phone ( _wouldn’t that be ironic_ ) when she opens the message.   
  
_Hey :) Miss you._   
  
It hits her like a train, and she just drops her phone into the mattress so she doesn’t break it. Curls around the pillow against her chest until something gives, and she can add _that_ to the list of things she’s broken because of all this.   
  
Her breath is shivery and constricted—not because of any physical reaction, exactly, but the emotions feel unbearably sharp.   
  
When she doesn’t feel so afraid of shattering her phone with a touch, she picks it up and stares at the message, swallowing past the bright starbursts going off in her stomach.   
  
_Miss u too. :)_ She hesitates. _Hope ur doing alright._   
  
God. Was that too much? Should she have put the smiley at the end of the second sentence? She’s all over the place with these hormones.   
  
Minutes go by; Kara’s anxiety ratchets up with each passing second.   
  
Then, _Yeah, I am. You?_   
  
Shit. _Peachy. :)_  
  
 _I’m glad. Not getting into too much trouble, are you?_   
  
She smiles, and the feeling moves down her body, some of that awful tension easing.   
  
_I’m going wild. Drinking. Drugs. Skipping school. ;)_  
  
 _I knew it. Can’t leave you alone for a minute. :P_  
  
 _Nope. I’m a superhuman menace. :D_   
  
Kara closes her eyes and wishes with every cell in her body that she could hear Alex laugh.   
  
Her phone vibrates. _Yeah you are. Alright Supermenace, gotta go. Take care of yourself._   
  
She’s halfway through typing _Thanks, u too. :)_ when the second text comes:   
  
_Love you._   
  
Kara laughs out loud at that; or maybe it’s more of a choked sob. She hits “Send” on her first text, then, _Love u too_.   
  
They’ve said that to each other more times than they can count, growing up. And _something’s_ changed, but Kara would give anything to have _that_ back.   
  
She drops her phone back on the mattress, buzzing, hurting, disoriented. But she falls asleep breathing easier than she has in months.   
  
Because at least Alex still loves her. 


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kara tries to navigate Midvale and her senior year without Alex.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Casual Bisexuality, organized for maximum disruptiveness. 
> 
> AA/N: There’s some hints of unhealthy codependency… but also, having your entire planet destroyed, losing your entire family, your culture, and your _species_ , and then only being able to confide in maybe three other people that you’re an actual _alien_ isn’t exactly “healthy”, either. So that may have skewed the outcome somewhat.

Things between her and Alex are still strained. A couple texts aren’t going to change that. Kara can barely bring herself to send a _Hey. :)_ every so often, even though she thinks about it every day.  
  
They talk a little more over the summer; a couple texts here and there. Phone calls. Skype chats (no video). But with Alex barely talking to her, Kara suddenly has a lot of time on her hands.  
  
And time, she decides, is one of her least favorite things. Hanging in one place. Waiting. Wishing she could text Alex. Wishing Alex would text her.  
  
It’s been five years? Six? Everything has changed utterly, completely. So fast that it seems unthinkable, the idea of her life on Krypton moving at a similar pace.  
  
But all it takes is this, apparently, and she’s back in the Phantom Zone.  
  
The Phantom Zone didn’t have Alex all over it, though. Walking through Midvale, even with other kids (who never let her forget how _weird_ she was anyways), is an endless parade of memories and first-times and things etched into her mind in a level of detail that she’s not sure most people around her can even start to comprehend—not when this is their entire world. When they take it for granted, the way Kara took Krypton for granted.  
  
Now, her mind seizes every detail—overwhelming, _different_ , but unmistakably alive.  
  
All of those new memories are with Alex.  
  
It was so reluctant, at first. Even after the Steve incident. Eliza and Jeremiah had insisted that Kara—essentially—not be left alone. Once Alex had figured out how to listen to her, though, they found a system for when Kara needed to be alone. And Alex, too. That had helped immensely—both of them (cautiously) enjoying their odd new roles. Sometimes even looking forward to it.  
  
The end result, though—everywhere she goes is an echo of _”Oh my god, Kara”_ , or “One night…”; “One day…”. “This is where…”, followed by a turning point—with Alex as the lynchpin.  
  
It’s not that Midvale is her whole world. Midvale with _Alex_ is her whole world.  
  
Kara is seventeen when she loses her world again. But this time, she has to keep walking through it all the same.  
  
//  
  
That fall is a whole new world for Kara’s nose.  
  
It’s not like she doesn’t already learn things about the world and the people around her that she’d really rather not know. It’s not like she _needed_ any of her senses dialed up further.  
  
But now, she can scent omegas and alphas and betas.  
  
It’s maybe (thankfully) not an intensification. More like a specialization; instead of a confusion of scents, she sometimes just… _knows_. Knows _omega_ , knows _alpha_ —before her nose has even registered that there’s a scent, or where it’s coming from.  
  
Maybe it’s more like a preference, too; some things, she finds herself attracted to, or enjoying; paying attention to a person or a conversation, and not really knowing why—but also, strangely, not as concerned.  
  
It takes her years of embarrassing situations to make the connection between _that_ and the reaction it gets from the rest of her body.  
  
In her defense, subtlety is hard when you have the world pouring mostly unfiltered through your senses.  
  
//  
  
That’s the other thing—It’s also Kara’s first school year without Alex there as her touchstone, her focus, to help her block out the noise.  
  
She wishes she could text her. Wishes she could talk to her. _Anything_. Because Eliza’s gone most of the time, and even when she _is_ there, she’s not always… there.  
  
(She hears Jeremiah’s voice, then: _”It’s hard, losing your mate”_ ; _”She’s an alpha”_.)  
  
(She hears Jeremiah’s voice, later, when she walks into Alex’s apartment and the stinging scent in her nose reminds her of nights that were just her and Eliza, her and Eliza and the crystal glass, or the coffee mug. Nights with just her and Eliza, and Kara letting Eliza think that she didn’t see the shimmer in her eye, didn’t count how many glasses it took before she could muster a smile that Kara _felt_. Nights that Kara let Eliza think she was asleep, but she lay awake counting her unsteady breaths, unsteady breaths and the sound of the waves down below on the pier, the three of them breaking on this single unmoving not-presence—)  
  
( _”The two of you are so alike.”_ )  
  
(Jeremiah is always there between them.)  
  
That’s not to say that Eliza isn’t their Superwoman. She’s the sole reason why Kara and Alex can eat, for a while. She makes it to all their events, all of Alex’s projects and competitions, that are humanly possible—and then some that aren’t. Kara sometimes wonders if Eliza has hidden superpowers that let her be literally _everywhere_ , let her get back from conferences and make it to extracurriculars impossibly (mostly) right on time.  
  
It’s not even that Eliza criticizes Alex’s work in front of other people (that’s always later, at home, couched in a “Sweetie, I couldn’t help but notice…”).  
  
It’s just that Kara learns to notice Eliza’s presence by the sudden tang of wine in the air. That her heart learns to break at events when Alex will look out at the audience or her eyes will subtly shift over the people there, looking for Eliza, looking for her expression. She probably thinks no one else notices; she always thinks she’s the sneakiest. But Kara knows that Alex always looks.  
  
It’s that Kara knows—the hurt in Alex’s eyes when Eliza is almost impassive. The way her shoulders stiffen when Eliza places a hand on them and says, “Good job, sweetie”—the way that she anticipates the criticism. The way her nails dig into her palms when Eliza refuses her help at night, even just to bring her a blanket when she starts to fall asleep on the couch. _Go take care of your sister._  
  
It’s that Kara knows how many glasses, exactly, Eliza will have to drink before she smiles at _all_. But Alex will still blame herself.  
  
"I don’t think she meant it like that," Is all Kara can say softly, one night where it gets to Alex so badly that she comes upstairs to Alex pacing and swearing and punching her pillow and mattress to muffle the sound.  
  
" _Then how does she mean it??_ " Alex realizes the volume of her voice after she explodes at Kara and Kara jumps.  
  
Alex slumps down onto the edge of her bed. "I’m sorry, she just…” Alex looks up at Kara and her eyes are glittering. "Doesn’t she get how she _sounds_?"  
  
Kara’s heart cracks and she’s next to Alex and wrapping her arms around her in less than a second.  
  
She doesn’t know how to tell Alex what she sees—Eliza checking the doors and windows at night, after she thinks they’ve gone to sleep; Eliza fighting to make sure that no one questions Kara’s legitimacy, or their family’s authenticity; Eliza fighting through legal forms until her eyes are bleary; the sharp spike in her heartbeat whenever someone knocks at the door; the way she says it:  
  
_"You need to take care of your sister, Alex."_  
  
_When I’m gone_ , Kara hears, though Eliza doesn't say it.  
  
_You need to know the history of your people, Kara; Someday, you will be the keeper of Krypton’s legacy, Kara; Be brave, Kara. When I’m gone._  
  
_When I’m gone._  
  
_When I’m gone._  
  
_When I’m gone._  
  
She would trade a thousand more nights being utterly frustrated by her studies—not even to have them back; just to remember more. For them.  
  
But Alex is crying and Kara wraps her up and murmurs quietly into her shoulder.  
  
"I don’t think she does," Kara says; and then, because she doesn’t Alex will get the apology she needs anytime soon, “I’m sorry.”  
  
She wishes she knew how to tell Alex what she sees:  
  
How Eliza’s being asked to do all of this alone; Eliza trying to be their one shield against the tide.  
  
Eliza trying to bear all of it alone, so they don’t have to.  
  
But none of them can, a part of Kara’s Kryptonian upbringing insists every time she sees it. None of them *do*. And even on Krypton, with its spires and its automation and technology, _no one_ did things alone. But this isn’t Krypton.  
  
Eliza is their alpha mother. Eliza is an alpha without a mate.  
  
And the two of them are all she has left.  
  
//  
  
He has the locker next to her. That’s actually how it starts.  
  
She avoids the crowds. Gets to school extra-early, and then leaves later than most. He gets there late and leaves late; he drives himself. Now that she’s eighteen, so does she (her driving test was memorable).  
  
It starts as saying hi between periods. Talking a little longer after school, maybe, when the halls aren’t so loud. Walking together-ish to their classes when they have them in the same part of the school. It mostly amounts to comments about classes—and once, he catches a glimpse of some art stashed in her locker, a drawing of the Temple of Rao in Argo City.  
  
He takes classes like Shop and Material Sciences, but she’s seen the stuff in his locker. It surprises her; there’s just something about the sensibility of them that reminds her of Argo City. Which is stupid, and homesick of her.  
  
It’s stupid. But he’s nice. And cute. And it’s not like she’s doing anything else, apart from college applications.  
  
And he’s a beta. Sometimes, Kara wonders how she can actually _be_ an alpha; because in this pheromonal powder keg that is high school, his scent is a welcome relief from the sharp and inexplicable reactions that she has to phantom alphas and omegas—suppressants and masking agents only do so much for a Kryptonian nose.  
  
Somewhere along the way, she ends up with a boyfriend.  
  
//  
  
The racing heart gets Kara’s attention first; racing and _close_ , closer than most people get with a heartbeat that fast. Like they ran from another class; but the two-minute warning hasn’t even sounded yet.  
  
She turns and sees an unfamiliar boy slide into the seat next to her. He smiles nauseously. Something spikes in Kara’s chest.  
  
"Hey," He says, voice low, "Is it okay if I sit here? And, like, pretend I know you?"  
  
"Um." After five-odd years of being teased relentlessly over the finer points of human society, she's slow to say yes to anything she’s not immediately certain of.  
  
But she can *smell* his anxious sweat, and his heartbeat’s only dropped slightly.  
  
"Sure?"  
  
He flashes a quick grin and relaxes. "Great. I'm Calvin."  
  
"Kara. Why are you…?” Kara gestures.  
  
Those nerves make a return appearance. "Just someone being annoying." His eyes flicker towards the windows. Kara follows his gaze.  
  
Ah. It’s her least favorite alpha.  
  
"Oh, brother." Kara mutters. "Brad?"  
  
Calvin bobs his head quickly. "You know him?" He shakes his head and snorts. "Of _course_ you know him."  
  
"He was a jerk to my sister last year." She looks back at Calvin. "She broke his nose, though." If Brad wants to come in here, she has some choice words she'd like to say to him.  
  
Calvin laughs, surprised; his eyebrows rise nearly to his hairline and his eyes light up. "Seriously? I like your sister."  
  
Somewhere in the conversation, the two-minute bell sounded; Kara jumps when the final bell rings. It saves her from having to respond to his last comment.  
  
Calvin grins at her conspiratorially and winks. Kara can’t help but return the smile. “Guess I’m taking AP English today.”  
  
She watches out the window, making eye contact with Brad and holding it until Brad rolls his eyes and sneers and slinks off for the moment.  
  
It’s the first time in a while she’s had that level of venom directed at her personally; it stings, sparks adrenaline and drives her heart rate up, even though she knows it’s not worth it. It’s not worth him breaking his hand on her if he tried to raise a fist. He’s not worth her laser vision. He’s not worth outing herself over.  
  
But when she looks back at Calvin, he looks a little brighter around the edges, and for some reason, that seems important—maybe because it feels like the first time in months that she’s made someone _smile_. Maybe because she remembers the nauseous look on Alex’s face after her fight with Brad. Maybe because she doesn’t want that to happen to anyone else, and without Alex here to put the brakes on, she’s having a hard time remembering why that surge in her chest could be a problem.  
  
Either way, it makes her chest fill.  
  
//  
  
“I can walk with you out to your car, if you want.” Kara offers without much thought later, after school.  
  
Calvin startles a little bit. Laughs nervously. “Uh… I mean, I think I’m gonna be fine. I just need to go home and get my next dose of suppressants.”  
  
“What?” Kara asks. _Suppressants_? Then it clicks, and she could honestly kick herself. “Oh! Of course.” And then—he’s looking at her the same way that he looks at Brad or any other alpha. “I—I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean—I just meant—Forget it.” But apparently she’s not going to follow her own advice. “He was a _huge_ dick to my sister last year. I just meant… if you’re worried about him showing up. That’s all.”  
  
He’s looking at her with an arched eyebrow and a little smile at one corner of his mouth and she thinks she’s seen the exact same expression on Alex’s face before—that evaluating one, that cautious one.  
  
That smile wins out, and he shakes his head. He has dark hair, she thinks. Like Alex’s. Dark, dark brown, really; falling over his eyes. Dark brown eyes. Keen eyes.  
  
She bites her lip. He doesn’t trust her.  
  
Not that she can blame him. But—it’s a running theme in her life. Being clumsy. Messing things up.  
  
“That would actually be cool.” He says. “I mean, it’ll probably be fine. But it’d be nice.”  
  
Kara blows out a breath. Didn’t ruin _that_ completely. Awesome.  
  
//  
  
She goes home feeling like she actually did something _good_ with this… whatever it is she got saddled with. Even if it’s just helping some random omega feel safer. Even if nothing even happened.  
  
She’s restless. Pacing. Can’t focus on her homework. Doesn’t want to sit still.  
  
That night, after everything’s gone dark, she sneaks downstairs—past Eliza, asleep on the couch—out to the garage.  
  
She grabs one of the surfboards that haven’t been touched in years and slips out the door on the side.  
  
Her chest aches as she approaches the lifeguard station—In her memory, Alex is up in it, or leaning her board against the base to fix her suit; the beach was always _hers_. There’s the lingering feeling of Alex’s memory watching her from the station.  
  
Midvale is always Alex’s. Midvale is always _Alex_.  
  
But the water has always been Kara’s one fear on this whole planet; the ocean, the whole _expanse_ of it. The only thing she knows of that can kill her; not the pressure, and she’s strong enough to fight even a rip current—or just launch herself out into the air.  
  
But she can still drown. Theoretically.  
  
At the same time, it’s been the biggest (literally) miracle of this planet. On Krypton, _every_ body of water was toxic. Poisoned by hundreds of years of industrial waste. The radioactive by-products of harnessing Krypton's core for… everything. Fuel, energy, agriculture. Everything the upper classes, the thinkers, didn't want to have to think about.  
  
She leaves the board on the shore and just walks straight into the water.  
  
She stays under, and she kicks and kicks and kicks for what feels like miles. Until she feels a burn in her muscles. And then she surfaces, takes a breath, and turns around. How many times she does it, she’s not sure.  
  
Yes, technically, she’s breaking the rules. But she floats on her board afterwards and, for two minutes, feels like maybe she’s out-swam the memories hanging over her. Lets herself dream.  
  
Today was like a match scratching. Something’s burning in her chest. _Potential_. The band of the Milky Way shimmers above her.  
  
Maybe what she needs is to gather her own light, for once.  
  
//  
  
Reality seeps back in pretty quickly.  
  
The next day, she looks for Calvin. And the day after that. And the day after that. But he’s not there. She doesn’t see him for a long while after that. She’s still “that weird girl (who’s slightly less weird now)”. Alex doesn’t text her at _all_ that week. And two days later, she wakes up and has a panic attack because _what if someone saw her swimming_.  
  
And life moves on.  
  
Her boyfriend (she’s still not sure how that happened, and she’s not sure that she’s fond of people referring to them as a couple) asks her to the next school dance, and when she says yes… Well, that kind of makes it official. In everyone else’s eyes.  
  
But he’s… nice? The longer things go on, the more glad she is just to have a friend. To not be completely alone here, nothing but the tide coming in and her own thoughts to ruminate over. And over. And over.  
  
She can’t _tell_ him anything, though; she can’t even bring herself to tell him her status. Can’t have sister nights or stay up til two a.m. watching TV. Can’t tell him about how much she _aches_ to be able to use her powers, for the first time in years.  
  
But he does help keep her mind off what happened with Alex—her _sister_. Alex was her _sister_. That’s what Eliza keeps calling them. That’s what they’re supposed to be.  
  
It takes a whole six months, but she finally has herself convinced—sisters.  
  
And then Alex comes back for Thanksgiving break with a girlfriend. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry it's taken me this long to update.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The start of a family tradition.

There’s a fluttery weak feeling in her stomach that she tries to ignore when she sees the car pull up—and then two of them get out, instead of just Alex, and that pure liquid electricity down in the pit of her stomach stutters uneasily, turns acid. _What?_   
  
Alex hadn’t mentioned that she was bringing anyone.   
  
It’s probably a friend of hers, though, right? Alex had had a huge falling-out with her best friend before she left for college. She could use some friends. Alex has had to give up too much of her social life for Kara already.   
  
But Alex didn’t _tell_ her.   
  
Alex hasn’t told her much, now that she's thinking about it. Anything at all about what her classes are like, or her friends, or what she does in her free time. It hits Kara in that moment that she barely knows anything about Alex’s life now. She was just so happy that Alex was talking to her at _all_ , so desperate for that connection, the sound of Alex’s voice saying her name with that quiet warmth that’s reserved for _her_ , that she clung to scraps.   
  
Now she realizes how little they really were.   
  
A crackling sound gets her attention, and Kara looks down to see the edge of her desk dissolve into sawdust in her hand where she’d leaned on it to look out the window.   
  
Before she can move to clean up the mess, voices catch her attention from downstairs.   
  
_”—It’s so good to meet you,"_ The first voice Kara can pick out is Eliza’s, _"Alex has told me so much about you."_   
  
_She has?_ The hammering of her pulse in her throat and the rising queasy feeling in her stomach make it hard to parse Eliza’s tone.   
  
_"You, too, Doctor Danvers."_ The stranger’s voice is bright and confident.   
  
Whoever she is, Alex apparently told her plenty about their family.   
  
_"'Doctor Danvers', huh? I like her already. Good choice, sweetheart."_ Eliza’s tone turns playful.   
  
_"Oh my god, Mom."_ Alex’s voice comes muffled, like she's burying her face in her hands. " _We’re_ dating _, not mated."_   
  
_Dating_. Kara’s stomach plummets even farther. Everything is spiraling out of control very fast.   
  
In the span of about two minutes, Kara goes from hopeful to a stranger in her own home.   
  
//  
  
For the first time in years (since she first came to the Danvers’), Kara doesn’t finish her dinner.   
  
When Eliza comes to get her, Kara honestly considers saying she isn’t hungry; in retrospect, Kara wishes she’d gone with her instincts.   
  
She can’t muster her usual enthusiasm that she does to respond to Eliza when she calls to her through the door.   
  
"Just a minute!" Tension sparks in the pit of her stomach, in her back, lighting up the nerves there. Threatening to leave her paralyzed with dread.   
  
Somehow, she moves. Time to go meet this new intruder in their home.   
  
Okay, that was mean. Whoever Alex is dating can’t be _that_ bad. Or at the very least, doesn’t deserve those thoughts.   
  
But all of that's drowned out by the wave after wave of anxiety that hits her as she opens the door to her room. Alex is seeing someone. Alex didn’t tell her.   
  
Does she _want_ to see Kara? What will she _think_ when she sees Kara? Will she even care?   
  
The last few months, Kara’s thought about Alex every _day_ ; even though she has a boyfriend. Now, apparently, Alex hasn’t been thinking much about her at all?   
  
As she trails down the stairs, well behind Eliza, her senses kick into hyperdrive.   
  
And then that weak fluttery feeling comes back, somehow. Because there’s the scent she remembers—Alex’s shampoo, her hair, her skin. She left traces of it all over the house, but it’s here— _she’s_ here. Alive and real. She didn’t think that there’d be a difference, coming home to it every day while Alex has been gone, but there _is_. And it’s like something deep inside her relaxes, in spite of everything. Like a layer of her skin comes off.   
  
Because Alex is here. _Alex is here._   
  
And that’s how she walks into the kitchen; stripped down to bare emotional bones and memory. All the more raw for Alex’s absence.   
  
And there's Alex, sitting at the table—with the arm of a stupidly handsome stranger around her shoulders.   
  
Kara really should try to be socially appropriate— _act normal, Kara_ —but she can’t even make herself look for more than a moment at the stranger’s—Alex’s _girlfriend_ ’s—face. Not when there’s Alex, Alex's face, that face that she hasn’t seen in months.   
  
She looks a little thinner, narrower in the face than Kara remembers her being. It’s just a slight change, but she looks older.   
  
More than that; there’s something around her eyes—new knowledge, new experiences, maybe. She’s wearing a Stanford hoodie that Kara’s never seen her in before; taken together, she looks like a completely different person than the last time Kara saw her.   
  
Alex’s eyes flicker over to her, and Kara’s heart stops.   
  
Even with everything different about her, there’s still a spark in Alex’s eyes when they meet Kara’s; something that matches the small solar flare in Kara’s stomach. Their familiar dark color, alive and intelligent and watchful, that ever-present tiredness gathered at the corners. The curve of her lips and the beat of her heart that’s Alex’s smile when she sees _Kara_.   
  
She thinks maybe the feeling that washes through her like fire along her nerve endings is relief—or it would be, if Alex’s presence didn’t cut right to the quick of her; like her skin is made of tissue paper instead of steel.   
  
It’s like it’s been decades since the last time Kara saw her; and at the same time, it’s like a day hasn't even gone by.   
  
Someone clears their throat. Kara realizes there are approximately three sets of eyes on her right now. Watching her stare at Alex. She feels herself flush with shame, shrink in on herself.  
  
The stranger is looking at her with a smile that Kara is sure works _wonders_ with parents—but it’s starting to fade around the edges. Kara feels queasy again, weak in the knees.   
  
Still, the girlfriend’s the one who breaks the silence.   
  
“Hey,” She reaches out with one hand, “I’m Andi.”   
  
It takes Kara a full two or three seconds before she remembers she’s supposed to react, before the social expectations penetrate past the raw _feeling_.   
  
She looks at Andi’s hand.   
  
She’s _supposed_ to take it, smile and say hello and introduce herself—but suddenly, she feels very unsure of her strength. She doesn’t dislike Andi—has barely _met_ her—but she doesn’t want to _hurt_ her, either.   
  
It’s like that first day of seventh grade all over again. Do you snub someone, or do you risk hurting them?   
  
That look falters, and Andi drops her hand. Fuck.   
  
She manages an uneasy smile and a small wave. “Kara.”   
  
Well, this is off to a craptastic start.   
  
//  
  
With two alphas and an omega around the same table, there’s already enough masking agents in the air to confuse everything but (probably) a direct skin sample.   
  
Kara’s nose is—unfortunately—better than that. And she’s accustomed to living with Eliza and Alex, so she’s familiar with the ones they use.   
  
She’s already having trouble feeling like eating, listening to the conversation. It’s almost all Eliza asking Alex about what she’s studying, what she’s been up to. And Alex talking about it.   
  
She has so much to _say_. So much more than the short, awkward conversations they’ve been having on the phone, through text messages. And Kara wishes she could listen better, wants to be happy for her, she does—Alex deserves to be happy, she’s never heard Alex have so much to say at dinner before.   
  
But every new thing Alex brings up, every question Alex answers and every new activity and club that Alex describes that she didn’t tell Kara about when _they_ talked, feels like another light-year between them. Until Kara feels like she’s on another planet, over in her chair, inches away from them.   
  
It’s like Alex has started a whole new life. One without her in it.   
  
She’s already struggling, already too raw, senses awash in information that she doesn’t want and doesn’t need, observations and details floating in one or two at a time like driftwood—  
  
And then her brain seizes on Andi’s scent—new, intrusive, masked but not _enough_ — _alpha_.   
  
Andi is an _alpha_.   
  
//   
  
Heartbeats. Blood rushing. Breathing. Voices. Things start to go transparent.   
  
At the same time, there’s Andi, smiling easily while she talks with Eliza, leaned back in her chair.   
  
Alpha.   
  
She’s not rude or pushy, not loud or crude or cutting or overtly physical (past the ridiculously immaculate presentation). She’s not like any alpha Kara’s ever met before.   
  
She has no idea how she missed it before, but now that she’s figured it out, she can’t believe she didn’t know at first glance.   
  
_This_ is what an alpha looks like.   
  
Alpha—not like Kara, alpha. _Human_ alpha. A _real_ alpha. Not trapped between two worlds, fitting into neither. No doubts. No questions.   
  
They’re talking, but she doesn’t really hear the individual words; it’s all reduced to the sound of the air in their throats. Broken down to a granular level. But somehow, her senses pick up on Andi putting her arm around Alex’s shoulders again.   
  
She’s on her feet before she realizes she’s moved—it’s all too much, the physical urge to _move_ , to _leave_ , too strong. Everything’s dead silent. All eyes are on her again. She can’t look at Alex. A fresh roil of shame starts in her guts.   
  
“I—I’m not feeling well,” She stammers, “Sorry.”   
  
It takes all her focus to move at a normal human speed up the stairs; to not run into anything, because she doesn’t trust herself to not take a chunk out of it.   
  
She gets behind the door to her room, presses her back to it, and thanks Rao that none of them have hearing like hers, because that was definitely a sniffle that just slipped out, and she’s breathing like she just flew to the Fortress and back with no rest.   
  
She slides down to the floor, shivering. She can still hear what’s going on downstairs. She wishes—not for the first time, but maybe the most fervently she’s ever wished—that she couldn’t. That she could just turn it off.   
  
She tries not to think about how she’d hold Alex’s hand, feel her blood beating against her palm, tune into her heartbeat like she was climbing into Alex’s chest and pulling the sound around her—and that would be enough. She could get her balance back. Tries not to panic—how is she going to do this without her?   
  
There’s a heat starting behind her eyes and Kara honestly doesn’t know whether it’s tears or that concentrated sunlight that pours out of her body. She shivers hard and wraps her arms around her knees. Oh, _Rao_.   
  
There’s the sound of a cabinet shutting; a bottle on the counter. Eliza’s wine from under the sink?   
  
The sound of the cork coming out a few moments later confirms it. Wine pours into a glass. A lot of wine.   
  
“ _You want some, Andi?_ ” Alex’s voice comes from downstairs. “ _Mom?_ ”   
  
//  
  
The moment she’s calmed down even a little bit, she’s berating herself.   
  
Why couldn’t she stand more? Why couldn’t she _deal_ with it? Why can’t she just be _happy_ for her sister?   
  
Alex has had so little that was her _own_ , since Kara came into her life; her own room, her own friends, her own _life_. Can’t she stop making everything in Alex’s life about _her_?   
  
And then—is this what being an alpha is? All she’s ever heard about is the territoriality. Is this what that feels like?   
  
Kara buries her face in her arms, wrapped tight around her knees. She doesn’t _like_ Andi, not by any stretch, but she doesn't want to fight with her. Doesn’t want to hurt her.   
  
It’s humiliating—the only alpha she knows that would rather run away than fight—but she would rather run than hurt someone.   
  
It’s been her worst fear since she came here: Accidentally hurting one of the people who she still can’t help but see as more vulnerable than her. Even the ones who’ve bullied and harassed her all this time.   
  
Apparently, she can’t even do being an _alpha_ right.   
  
Not that she wants to; but it’d be nice, for once, to know where she stood. To not be—no matter what she does—an alien.   
  
But even more than that—if this is what Alex wants, if this is what makes her _happy_ …  
  
All she can see is Brad, leering at them after Alex turned him down—before she broke his nose.   
  
_"You wanna fuck your sister, Danvers?"_   
  
Clarification: Before Alex broke his nose the _first_ time.   
  
She curls tighter around herself. Everything in her is revolted by those words, the look on his face, the ease with which he switched from solicitous to insulting. And they’re everywhere she turns, pressing in on her. Is _that_ what seethes under her skin? Is that what this is?   
  
//   
  
Kara shouldn’t listen. _Shouldn’t_. But Alex is staying in her old room and Andi is in the guest bedroom. Such a _gentleman_. Kara wants to puke.   
  
No, really—she actually feels like she might throw up. She’s never once gotten sick here on Earth, but she feels like she might, now, with how things have gone.   
  
She’s doing alright at the not-listening, though, until she hears the word _sister_ , and then everything goes pale and semitransparent, even with the lead-lined glasses.   
  
“You didn’t tell me your foster sister was an _alpha_.”   
  
“She’s my _sister_. What’s there to tell?”   
  
“What’s your history with her?”   
  
“What _history_?”   
  
“She’s an _alpha_ , Alex. And you’re—“ There’s a silence where Kara’s stomach twists painfully, fireworks in her guts. “—You’re not even _related_ to her.”   
  
“What does that even _mean_? She can still be my sister.” The irritation in Alex’s voice is plain; beneath that, a tension Kara can’t interpret.   
  
“Then why do I feel like I just walked into the middle of something between you and her?“   
  
Kara’s breath cuts short. She remembers things that Alex said, before she really understood just how good Kara’s hearing was. Things she said when she thought Kara was out of earshot, not long after Kara came to live with the Danvers. To her friends at school.   
  
“Throwing her under the bus”, Jeremiah called it. But Kara—even then, no matter how much it hurt or how confusing it was—understood the position that she put Alex in, standing out like she did. Being _different_ like she was. How disowning her to her friends was a way of surviving.   
  
Alex hasn’t done it in a _long_ time. But the words still echo up from the back of her brain, whenever she’s being weird; being not-normal.   
  
Alex makes a frustrated sound. “I don’t know, Andi. But I _told_ you. She’s my sister. That’s all.”   
  
_Sister. Sister. Sister._ Every time Alex says it, it hits her with a force that’s far more than the volume of her voice, far more than the heat in her tone. Low in the gut, like a nail being driven into a piece of wood. Until it’s all she hears. Until she can barely move, pinned to her bed under the weight of it.   
  
She supposes that’s her answer.   
  
//   
  
She struggles to understand; what’s happening, her own reaction. She didn’t tell Alex about her boyfriend. Why would Alex have told her about her girlfriend?   
  
But every passing second hammers home the reality of it, drains her thoughts and her emotions and leaves her mind spinning, but empty.   
  
Because there’s no way around it: Alex didn’t tell her.   
  
But why does she care if Alex is dating someone? She shouldn’t. Alex is her _sister_. And she’s not required to tell her _anything_.   
  
( _Supposed_ to be her sister, Kara’s brain supplies helpfully.)   
  
(She just misses being _important_ in Alex’s life, another part of her brain rationalizes.)   
  
Slowly, the thought creeps in—what if Alex was worried about Kara’s reaction?   
  
_"We can’t do that again."_ Alex’s voice echoes out of her memories. Alex’s locked door. Had she hurt her? Was she _scared_ of Kara, of what Kara might want from her? Kara, always operating on instinct and emotion and too _much_ for the world around her; too intense, too strong.   
  
She thinks about everything that’s happened tonight, and is this why Alex didn’t tell her? Because she was scared Kara would react this way? Would lash out and be… be like…   
  
Be like Brad? Be like every other alpha she’s ever heard about, jealous and territorial and _pushy_?   
  
Is this what being an alpha _is_?   
  
Kara knows _she’s_ scared of what she might want from Alex. Might want _with_ Alex.   
  
But, like so many things on this planet, she just doesn’t have words for it.   
  
"Sister" is close but still doesn’t quite fit. "Omega" or "mate”—if only it felt that simple.   
  
_Sister_ ; _te-ie_. But they don’t share blood. And on Krypton, that was the connotation. Once again, she finds herself trapped in the gaps between the two worlds, concepts that don’t translate cleanly—she thought, maybe, that they did. She just had to figure out _how_.   
  
But even if they did, whatever beats in her chest for Alex escapes both _my sister_ and _te-ie_. Something so very visceral, physical, that laying here, Alex’s heartbeat sounding through the wall, it _feels_ like something in her blood. Red like the light she remembers spilling over her skin as a child.   
  
(She tries not to think about the sunset spilling through the window, Alex’s hair pooled on the pillow, the red thrum in Alex’s veins.)   
  
But not "sister". Not… not what Eliza means, when she praises how close they are, or reminds Alex _again_ to be a "good sister". Not what Alex means when she insists that Kara is her sister. Over and over and over again. There's something deep inside her that will always be too Kryptonian for Earth.   
  
And "mate" just makes her think of all the conversations she wishes she’d never overheard between boys bragging about the size of their knots.   
  
There’s another word, another night—but _Rao_ seems like a false promise, in light of what Astra became. In light of what she feels now; what she sees all around her, on this planet. Like so many things, she can’t reconcile the difference between what she was told and what it is.   
  
She understands, maybe, that Astra was _trying_ to protect her; to shield her—from the consequences of her actions, later on; from the worst parts of her own nature, the cruelty of their history—maybe even give her something to aspire to.   
  
But with the trail of broken laws, broken promises, that Astra left behind—it just falls flat, another gap she can’t bridge, a void so dark she doesn’t know how to chart it. Another betrayal. She still hears Kelex’s voice, clinically handing down what she would’ve been on Krypton. _Defect_.   
  
In the end, it was just another lie.   
  
She’s left with the fragments that she’s gathered from her day-to-day life. Impressions and snippets and broken conversations. Movies and media and "mating", everywhere. With this _force_ that beats in her blood.   
  
Kara finds herself falling through the cracks. Out of bounds wherever she turns. There’s just _Alex_.   
  
Whatever it is she feels, though, it’s clear that Alex doesn’t feel it. That Alex doesn’t _want_ it.   
  
And Kara has no idea what she’s supposed to do next.    
  
//   
  
"I’m sorry for not giving you a heads-up," Alex says the next morning, staring into her coffee. They’re alone in the kitchen; Kara meant to slip in ahead of everyone else and avoid a repeat of last night, but somehow, Alex woke up around the same time. Kara’s entire chest hurts at her words. "It was kind of a last-minute decision and I only told Mom because, well, I just needed to let her know there’d be one more person coming. Logistics and all." She shrugs uncertainly. "I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable." There’s something so raw in her voice.   
  
A dozen different things flit through her head—many of them barbed, sharper than she ever remembers wanting to be, shamefully so. Others, far more vulnerable. _This is the one place where I don’t have to pretend. The_ one place _it’s safe for me to be myself._   
  
But she knows deep down that that’s not it. Not entirely.   
  
_I never have to pretend with you._ But that’s not it, either, and even if it was, it’s not fair to Alex, asking her to keep putting her own life on hold for Kara when there’s clearly things that Alex wants for herself. To have Kara’s life, Kara’s secret, Kara’s pain, dictate everything that happens in this house. Like it always has, ever since she came here. This place needs to be safe for Alex, too.   
  
It’s not fair to Alex, or even remotely true, to pretend that this reaction isn’t because, on some level, she wants Alex all to herself. And if Alex doesn’t want that, then it’s not her place to try to demand it anyways. Like a Cliff’s Notes version of her thoughts last night on repeat: _Alpha, possess, territory_. It’s the only explanation for why she can’t just turn it _off_. _Selfish, selfish, selfish. Sick._   
  
"You deserve to have your own life." Kara can’t look up from her cereal bowl; if she does, she’s not sure if she can keep her reserved tone. Hold on to her sincerity. She knows what she’s saying doesn’t exactly follow, but it’s the closest thing to the truth of the moment that she can manage.   
  
She can feel Alex frown. “Hey.”   
  
Alex lays a hand on her shoulder. It feels like the first time they’ve actually touched since that night. The ache that’s been ever-present since then recedes, pulls far, far out until Kara thinks it might be gone.   
  
“C’mere,” Alex says, and pulls Kara into a hug.   
  
For a moment, it’s like all her raw edges are being soothed instead of scraped. Like the ever-present assault of noise and _alone_ and hurt is muted, and she can catch her breath.   
  
And then she catches a scent.   
  
It's Andi. Andi on Alex's clothes. On Alex's skin. In Alex's hair. Subtle, but just the hint has Kara’s mind spiraling again—Andi’s mouth on Alex’s skin, bodies pressed close enough together to leave a piece of themselves there even after they’re gone.   
  
Kara can't breathe.   
  
She’s already broken away and moving out of the kitchen before she really registers. Alex’s voice is echoing in her ears like something out of the past. “ _Kara?_ ” Far away.   
  
But she doesn’t stop. _Can’t_ stop, or Alex will see the look on her face and the tears in her eyes and _know_.   
  
She can’t tell—doesn’t _care_ —if she’s moving faster than a human should. She doesn’t stop until she’s up in her room with her door closed—and then she’s shaking apart.   
  
Alex has chosen someone else. Alex has chosen someone else.   
  
But more than that—Alex doesn’t want _her_.   
  
//  
  
Kara does her best to stay up in her room the rest of the day.   
  
Andi is polite, but there’s an obvious tension in the air when the two of them are in the room together. And the three of them? Andi _always_ has her arm around Alex’s shoulders, until Alex shrugs her off with a look. It would make Kara feel better, but Andi’s scent is still all over Alex’s skin—not in an “Alex didn’t shower” way, but in a “they’ve spent enough nights together that there’s some low-grade transference” way. Again, not something that’s her business to know—and not something that she _would_ know, she thinks, if not for her own particularly keen senses.   
  
And then—and _then_ —Alex goes into heat.   
  
Perfect.   
  
//  
  
She’s lying in her bed later, trying and failing not to tune in to Alex’s heartbeat, the sound of her existence. To not come back to it, over and over, the way a planet spins, everything on its surface looking towards the light.   
  
The door to Alex’s room closes; Andi. Whether Alex’s heartbeat jumps from fear or arousal, Kara can’t tell.   
  
It aches; Kara can’t be in that room with Alex, but Andi can.   
  
It aches; she hates that there’s part of herself that wishes Alex didn’t have this person who wants to comfort her. Who _can_ help comfort her.   
  
It aches because _she_ wants to be that person.   
  
So much for sisterly feelings.   
  
"What's going on with you?"    
  
”I told you, I don't want to.”   
  
" _You're in heat._ What's wrong with it? We won't be bonded for life. You’d feel better, too.”   
  
"I’m on _suppressants_. I don’t need to."   
  
“I know, but it’d help.”   
  
“ _No_ , Andi.”   
  
"Fucking hell, Lex." Kara makes a face. She _wants_ to tune them out, but—  
  
No. No. This is Alex's private life and she doesn't need Kara snooping around in it. Even if she'd kind of like to go over there and tell Andi to back the fuck off.   
  
Alex has made it clear that she can handle this herself. That she _wants_ to.   
  
Besides, from the sound of it, Kara would just make a nuisance of herself.   
  
The lead doesn’t really help her hearing, though.   
  
“And what’s up with _you_? You’ve been fine with not claiming me up til now. What the hell’s gotten into you?”   
  
Andi growls, and Kara feels something dark surge in her chest. “What is _up_ with you and your—your foster sister?”   
  
“ _Nothing_. I fucking _told_ you. And you were being rude earlier today. This is her _home_.”   
  
“Then explain to me why you’re going into heat _now_ , when you’re around her?”   
  
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe ‘cause it’s just _that time_?” Alex sounds genuinely aggravated, now. “But if you really want some pseudo-scientific psych _bullshit_ answer, maybe it’s because I’m _at home_ and usually that’s a pretty safe place?”   
  
“You don’t even do this for me.”   
  
“One: I don’t perform basic biological functions that I have no control over _for_ anyone, including you. Two: Then why d’you think I’d do it for my _sister_? For fuck’s sake.”   
  
“Because she’s not your sister, and your body knows it. Same as mine does. You can’t fight biology.”   
  
"For someone who's always said I should get to have a choice in what I do and with who, that's a pretty disappointing conclusion."   
  
There's a silence, and Andi draws in a breath. "Alex—“   
  
"Y'know, I think you've said enough. I think you need to go. Seeing as you can't control yourself around me when I'm like this."   
  
"Alex—“  
  
"Don't. I'll see you after break."   
  
//   
  
Kara manages to block out whatever conversation that happens next, but the sound of Andi’s car squealing and roaring and backing out of the drive not too long after is pretty unmistakable.   
  
Not too long after that, she hears the back door close quietly.   
  
She struggles for a while after that; she didn’t _like_ Andi, definitely not the way she talked to Alex or the way she glowered at Kara from the moment she came into the house so that Kara felt like she’d done something wrong. She’s perfectly happy to see her go.   
  
But Alex didn’t _have_ a personal life, it felt like sometimes. Had crushes and short relationships that never lasted. The fact that she brought Andi over for break was, well—Alex _liked_ her. _Really_ liked her. She’s probably pretty upset.   
  
Any part of her that’s _glad_ that Andi’s gone kind of shrivels up under the weight of that realization.   
  
Alex had something that was _hers_ , just hers, and Kara went and managed to ruin _that_ for her, too.   
  
In retrospect, she really shouldn’t be surprised that Alex didn’t want to tell her about Andi.   
  
//   
  
Kara stays in her bed. She stays in her bed, and _hurts_ , because how is this kind of existence worth _anything_?   
  
The truth of her nature: Something that seems to go against every principle she was taught. Something that is the _opposite_ of what anyone who claimed to care for her told her it was.   
  
She wished—still wishes, but wishing is too much right now—that Astra was here, so she could ask her _why_. That she could tell Eliza without Eliza _knowing_ , somehow—if she doesn’t already. That someone, _somewhere_ , knows a way to make a life out of this that’s _meaningful_. Something that’s worth living. But instead, she has Brad on one side and Kelex on the other; she has her heritage telling her that she’s _defective_ , unfit, unstable, uncontrollable—and an apparent living confirmation of that diagnosis.   
  
Does _Andi_ feel this way? Does Eliza? Earth’s entire social structure seems built to accommodate this; does that mean it’s true? The mold of it presses in on her, and she can’t remember if there’s any other way. Any other shape.   
  
Or, no—there _is_ no other way, or shape, and all this wanting, all this hoping for something else, is the reason why it continues to hurt so much.   
  
It's a cruelly ironic thought: She was sent all the way here, she _survived_ , only to be the most useless legacy that could have been chosen, the worst survival of her people. She was chosen, and sent here, only to epitomize the worst parts of her heritage, to be unfit to carry on the legacy of the House of El. To be _unable_ to.   
  
She wants something more, was _supposed_ to be something more (wasn’t she?)—but this is what she gets.   
  
// 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, hopefully this'll be the last chapter that just gets progressively angstier. 
> 
> It'll still be angsty, though. ;)


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first semester at college.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [I live!](https://media.giphy.com/media/MIlx72MOfloYg/giphy.gif)
> 
>  
> 
> So, I've been going off of an SSRI for the last month, and between that and RL responsibilities, I've been moving about as fast as molasses crawling uphill in January. I'm... really sorry this took so long. I've been trying to update regularly, I swear. :P 
> 
> To finish this off on a dramatic note, I'm going to finish this damn thing even if it takes the next three years. It probably won't, but it may be an uphill battle sometimes. 
> 
> Disclaimer for this chapter: I try to write as in a particular character's head as I can. The words that come out of their mouths are not a reflection of what I think or how I speak in my day-to-day life--and, also, may not reflect current "acceptable" terminology, depending on when the piece is set. Language changes over time, and some characters aren't always on the ball. So, you have my sincere apologies; the early-to-late '00s are not the '10s. 
> 
> Also--warning ahead for some serious cheese in the later parts of the chapter. It couldn't stay entirely angst. Don't worry; I sandboxed it.

After the Thanksgiving debacle, the only place left to go is away. The most concrete escape—the most promising, the _soonest_ —is college. 

Applications are already in full swing; she's procrastinated on them, per usual—unsure what major, what college, so many _choices_ and there don't actually seem to be any differences in what they offer apart from reputation—But after Thanksgiving break, there's not much else she thinks of. 

Eliza tells her (the school counselors tell her, Alex tells her) that she could go to almost any school she wanted, probably—except maybe the best ones, they don’t say; the ones that Alex got into all with flying colors, full scholarships. That kind of thing. And that's fine, she tells herself. Kara Zor-El, the prodigy of the House of El, is no more. 

Honestly, she's not even sure how she's going to graduate, let alone get accepted to a college.

Even _that_ is hazy, though; like her mind's thrown up a wall of static, pulses of _away, away_ , the longer she's here. A barrier she's wrapped around herself, between the outside world and her. 

So she goes around and around and around, lists of words printed on paper repeated over and over again until the application process becomes just one more experience that she doesn't really have; it passes through her, and she remembers it, but it doesn't seem to make an impact. Nothing does. 

If she's honest, though, that might be for the best. No impact, no impression—no damage done. 

// 

Finally, she gives in and calls Alex over the subject of a major. One more time. 

" _I don’t know, Kara. It’s whatever you want to do._ " Alex sounds vaguely irritated. Kara fidgets with the hem of her shirt. She hates this; hates having to ask Alex how to do things all the time. Depend on her, on top of everything else. 

"Alex." Kara can hear the slight whine in her own voice. "It’s a big decision, and I don’t really…” She waves her hand, even though Alex can’t see it. "I don’t know what to pick." 

" _They’re not actually expecting you to have this figured out. Seriously, you can just pick something that looks fun and, like, take different classes. People change their majors a lot, and it’s not like you’re trapped forever with what you major in._ " She says that like she’s ever _not_ been headed for the sciences and a PhD. 

"I know, I just—“ She _knows_ , but it’s hard to grasp—The concept that you’re not locked into the role you choose. "It was just… different. Back on… back home." 

Alex lets out a sigh that she's heard a lot—she _wants_ to be irritated at Kara, but she can’t—and Kara wants to wrap it around herself. 

She wants (she hates herself for wanting) to be told it’s okay. She’s had Eliza and her teachers and her counselor and honestly even Alex has given her a similar explanation before—but she wants to hear that it’s alright. She’s not locked in. 

She doesn’t know what she’d do if she was. 

" _It'll be okay, Kar. Like, of course this is gonna reflect what you want to do with your life, but you can take stuff you enjoy. Especially at first. Maybe you just need to get there first and take some time checking things out._ " 

"It’s a huge decision." Kara says softly. 

" _Maybe you can try art? I know that’s always been a thing for you. Might be kinda therapeutic, too._ " … And Alex is out of ideas, and pretty soon all of her patience, from the sound of it. 

" _Just as a starting point. The point isn’t that you’re going to stick with it the whole way through. It’s just to get your foot in the door._ " 

Kara swallows, trying hard not to feel the sting. This is one of those things she’s going to have to figure out on her own. 

She doesn’t _want_ to pick Art—it’s a hobby, for her; like Alex said, _therapeutic_. 

It’s as personal and intimate as she can get, in a place where _personal_ and _intimate_ set her apart. And being set apart makes her a target. Even Alex has given her that lecture—dozens of times, actually. 

But none of the rest seem right, either. So, after a few more weeks of waffling, she writes " _Art_ " in the blank fields of the papers they hand her. She hands them back. They look at it and nod and no one seems to notice how Kara’s practically shaking. 

_It’s just to get your foot in the door._  

It still feels awfully permanent. 

//

She still has to decide _where_ she wants to go—somehow, she got accepted to everywhere she applied to. But the answer to that question—that one's going to be a lot harder to ask Alex about. 

She wants to be near Alex. 

She tells herself it’s because she wants to fix things, and she does. But mostly, she just wants to be near her. 

And that’s when it comes to a head, really; the unease. At how she wants to be _close_ , how she wants to keep encroaching on Alex’s space, and is this that instinct that she’s seen driving the behavior she hates so much? 

She can’t _do_ that. Doesn’t want to—but at the same time, she can't seem to help herself. Can’t seem to stop wanting to be near her. 

It’s time to break away, she decides. No matter how much it hurts. That’s how this goes, right? Alex is _everything_. And that can’t be. 

So she needs to grow up. 

//

In the end, she doesn’t really even pay attention to the name of the college she chooses; it's words in a fancy font in a dead language printed on dead plant fiber, a crest that looks like every other crest, the same set of symbols, over and over in infinite combinations. More than once, she says the wrong name in conversation and only realizes it when Eliza corrects her. 

In her mind, there’s a map, and every name is a point on that. She picks the point furthest from the one labeled "Stanford". 

Maybe someday, she’ll be able to come back, come closer again. Someday, when she’s found her feet and she’s _learned_ and Alex isn’t like air to her. 

Or maybe not, part of her whispers. Maybe they’ll just… move on. Drift apart. Maybe this was it, and Kara screwed it all up with her hormones and incessant _need_. 

And that’s when it all… stops. And she can’t think anymore. Can’t listen or absorb anymore. Falls into a space in her mind that’s neither English nor Kryptonian; just a grey quiet where nothing seems to stick. 

Even while she feels—angry? disappointed? ashamed?—she knows exactly what this is, and why.

On top of everything, the thought of losing Alex completely exceeds her own capacity for grief. 

Or panic. Or rage. Or any emotion. Just a crumbling vacuum in her chest that she can’t patch, that she can’t make herself lift a finger to stop. Just watches it all spill out of her. 

_Maybe someday_ is unthinkable—not because the waiting is unbearable and she needs _someday_ today, but because she can’t see _someday_. Can’t see the far side of this, nothing solid to propel herself with. 

It sounds like it should be simple. Make new memories. Have new experiences. But for Kara, it isn’t. Even if she doesn’t see another way to move forward. 

How can you _replace_ something like this? Kara can’t fall from the stars again into someone else’s life. She’s bent time and space just to make it this far and she’s not sure what else there is to bend. 

And even if she could, who else could she trust like this? Who else does she share all of this with—all the grief and the dislocation and the slow, slow—not healing, maybe; but the slow coming back into balance. 

More frighteningly—does she want anything else? 

// 

The first night, she doesn’t sleep. 

The flight out to campus is uneventful. Alex even comes along. But once she’s all unpacked and they’ve said their good-byes, it’s just her. 

She has a room all to herself—something Eliza insisted on, thank Rao. But it’s still a building full of a few hundred humans. A campus full of a few thousand. 

She’s used to hearing other heartbeats; falling asleep to them. But the only other place where she’s been around even _close_ to this many people was at school, and she _never_ would’ve slept at school. 

Hundreds of heartbeats; all of them unfamiliar. 

The room, the building, the _campus_ —all of it is alien in a way Midvale isn’t, a way it never was, it seems like. 

When it’s gone, when _Midvale’s_ gone, she feels that first absence, the one that every cell in her body cries out for; the way the light felt on her skin, the breath in her lungs. Like she can choke on the air even while the oxygen is moving through her blood. She can see in the dark; the light from the streetlights, from the _stars_ , even—but everything is dark, and none of it is real. 

Without Midvale, there’s no buffer, nothing between her and the complete alien-ness of the world around her—the material she’s laying on, the paint on the ceiling, the ceiling itself, even her pajamas, foreign cloth against her skin. 

When the sun comes up, she barely feels tired—lack of sleep hasn’t really bothered her since her powers came in—but the yellow-gold light is just one more thing out of place, one more thing that reminds her of everything that _isn’t_. 

The next week, when school starts, it’s even more pronounced. Rivers of humanity pouring around her, pulling her along with them. Everything seems sharper; she can’t shut it out. Not the noise of the hundred-odd people in her dorm building, or the world outside that. Not the midday crush of students walking through the campus or the sounds of the bells or the classrooms next door. 

Once, twice—she finds herself going back to her dorm, curling around her pillow, and trying so hard not to think of the one thing—a heartbeat, a hand—that she’d hang onto to block it all out, to find some kind of stillness in the middle of the noise. 

Tries not to wonder how she’s ever going face _this_ , this thing staring her down every time she opens her eyes, whenever she’s conscious—something so massive she can’t even wrap her mind around it. 

// 

_Hey :) how was your first week?_  

_Crazy. So many people!_  

_Good/bad crazy?_  

_Just crazy_

_Make any new friends?_

_Yes, mom :P_  

_So that's a no?_  

_Jerk._  

_¯_(_ ツ _)_ /¯_

_You copied that from google_  

┬──┬ ¯_(ツ)

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

_Jeez, you're so destructive._  

┬─┬ノ( º _ ºノ)

┻━┻︵ヽ(`Д´)ﾉ︵ ┻━┻

//

The school prides itself on being very "progressive" in its treatment of living arrangements—anyone of any genera can live in pretty much any dorm building—just in genera-specific "heat-safe" rooms. And, there are still genera-specific floors or even one or two entire dorms available, for those who want that "experience". The betas live… pretty much everywhere.

Not that it falls very far from this: The alpha dorms are also male-dominated to the point that girls aren’t allowed to live in them (well—they are, technically—they're just "discouraged"; they can't have heat-safe floors _just for girls_ in those dorms, and that's just not very safe for the girls, now, is it?), the omega dorms are almost all girls, with a few dozen beta girls sprinkled throughout (any boys are looked at with suspicion—are they just betas trying to get into the girls’ dorm?), and the beta dorms (theoretically) have a mix of all three—

Kara has yet to meet an "out" omega in a beta dorm—which she thinks probably says something. The alphas are few and far between, and for whatever reason, the ones who are out seem to be entirely unaware that playing down their alpha-ness is an option (there’s a black-and-white printout on the door of one of the people who she has a feeling is an omega—a screencap of Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story with one arm extended, captioned "Pheromones. Pheromones EVERYWHERE"). 

The omegas who _were_ somewhat open about it (or, for whatever reason, chose to wear some kind of omega scent) tended to all group together. 

"The flock", she'd heard one alpha call it in passing, "The buffet."

She ends up texting her cousin, after a particularly memorable weekend—was it Homecoming?— _How does Superman not have strong words with every alpha in Metropolis?_  

_I'm not sure, honestly. I bet it probably helps being able to lift a small continent. Most alphas can’t do that ;)_  

Kara sighs. If it makes him feel better, she supposes that’s all that matters. 

Being able to lift a small continent doesn’t keep her from wanting to have strong words with certain people (okay—launch certain people into orbit). If anything, it makes it more tempting. 

Kara ended up in one of the beta dorms. She didn't register as an alpha, either, although even if she did, the university was under very strict (HIPPO?) regulations of some kind to not divulge the information. 

There were benefits, according to some people. Giving people a heads-up before you accidentally wrecked your furniture in a heat-induced sex frenzy (ew) generally made them more likely to believe it than if you claimed that _after_ the fact, for instance. 

And it was all very hush-hush—there was almost no talk at all about genera in her dorm or on her floor. Alphas and omegas were expected to keep heat-scent in their own rooms, and almost everyone (except for those oblivious alphas, it seemed like) used some form of masking agent. Completely disguising one’s scent was apparently still somewhat time consuming and expensive even for humans, so redirecting it into something more "pleasant" seemed to be the thing. 

It may have felt awkward—a microcosm of everything Kara felt awkward about—but it's so much better than dealing with the alphas she hears yelling at all hours of Friday and Saturday nights. 

That didn't mean that there wasn't a period at the beginning of the semester where everyone was sizing everyone else up. Trying to figure out where they stood. Kara went with her usual tactic of staying in her room and ferociously using the scent masking agents she had on hand. It helps that her skin is literally indestructible; she can scrub as hard as she wants. 

The betas made the entire place livable. 

Kara had never actually lived long-term with betas before—she also didn't know that they could theoretically mitigate or even end heats if the alpha or omega in question was distressed enough. Unsurprisingly, they were seen as mostly just wet blankets. Even if they were by far the majority of the student body—roughly a 70-30 ratio of them to everyone else—and, frankly, made it so that people weren't at each others' throats constantly. 

Kara thinks that that's somewhat of an unfair assessment; learning that betas had the ability to mitigate heat-related discomfort almost entirely made a lot of things about her relationship with her ex make sense. 

They'd ended stuff on a fairly civil note, when they'd gone off to different colleges and he didn't think it was a good idea to try the whole long-distance thing. 

Which she gets. She does. 

It's just one more connection that she doesn't get to have here. 

But that doesn’t change a thing. She just... needs to keep moving on. Right? 

//

_”Your future!”_ everything around her screams. _”Welcome freshmen!”_ There’s guidance events and support every single day, it seems like. 

She goes to them, she does. 

But when they talk about careers, when they talk about the _future_ , about _growing up_—Kara doesn’t quite feel it. Kara’s somewhere else. 

There’s a sharp divide in her mind. In her present, there’s _bodies_ , people everywhere. The brick on the ground and the noise of the parties and everything. And then her mind— 

In her mind, there’s Krypton. There’s the way this place flows around her, doesn’t seem to touch her, and the place that’s so much a part of her that _touch_ is irrelevant. It’s in her skin, in her throat, on her tongue, in the marrow of her bones. 

It’s even in the structure of her individual atoms, she catches herself thinking; Krypton, _Rao_ , betraying itself and its presence subatomically, in the way it radiates its own difference in response to this sun. A barrier that’s not (this time) of her own making. Midvale and Alex didn’t change that; just obscured it. This is like ripping off the band-aid. 

The harder she tries to leave it behind, the less anything makes sense. 

_Transition_. That’s the word she keeps hearing, the first week, the next, the next after that. _Transition_ ; _homesick_. This may seem overwhelming now, they say, but things will adjust. You’ll adjust. _This is all just part of growing up_.

She needs all her attention to get through this transition, she tells herself. Over and over and over again. 

_This is part of growing up_. 

She’s forty-odd years old, she thinks. Outwardly (visually), she’s indistinguishable from an eighteen-year-old human—but she slept in suspended animation for twenty-four years and didn’t age, and her body—

Her body _isn’t_ human. 

She was twelve when she was sent away. Three more years (maybe sooner; she was progressing quickly) and she’d have begun the series of tests that would allow her to wear the colors of her House—that would’ve marked her as an adult, a full member of society. 

She might still be alive, might be the _only Kryptonian_ who spent any meaningful part of their life on Krypton who’s still alive—but she’ll never _grow up_. She’ll always be just shy of it, untested, her own future a question that will never be answered. Can’t ever be answered. 

Conversely, she didn’t grow up on Earth, either. The most formative years of her life (arguably) she was in a different part of the _galaxy_. And it shows, in her painfully obvious gaps in pop culture knowledge (that she's done everything in her power to close, but one always appears when she least expects it), her stammering when the right word, the word she wants to use, is in Kryptonian. 

The way she has to bite her cheek anytime someone says the words "alpha" or "omega". 

It’s not that she doesn’t want to grow up; not that she _wants_ to spend the rest of her life hiding under someone else’s wing, being taken care of, not… whole. And a host of other concepts that she can only articulate in Kryptonian. 

But sometimes it feels like she’s never _going_ to grow up. Human or Kryptonian. 

How _can_ she? 

//

Her RA makes a point of coming by Kara's room to introduce herself before the first week even starts. 

Kara's relieved there doesn't seem to be any of the tension she's seen between alphas (and some of the more intense betas) trying to establish a pecking order, nail down who's what and who's in charge. She hasn't heard her get involved in any of the gossip she's overheard—apparently the taboo is only around _openly_ discussing someone's genera. It doesn't sit well with Kara. 

On Tuesday, there's another knock on her door. Kara opens up to find her RA. 

She really should be better at this whole meeting-people thing, considering that all she's done since she got to this planet is meet people. But in this new place, most of her conversations seem to go a lot like this one: 

"Hey!" 

"Hey! So, a few people from the floor are gonna be watching _Serenity_ this Thursday, up on the top floor. Like eight or nine-ish?" 

“I—ah—I—maybe?" 

"Cool! See ya there!" 

She's lucky if she amounts to a full sentence in an average conversation. 

She was raised not to speak empty words—“maybe"? Really?—and she needs to get out of her room and actually meet people, like she said she was going to. But Thursday night finds her curled up on her bed around her pillow, trying to convince herself to get up and leave her room and go back into the shuffle of people in the hallway outside. 

Really—it's not actually all that much louder than it is in here. It's not like the walls actually block any of the sound out. 

There's a knock on her door. 

She's not sure why Jake knocks more softly on her door—if Jake is actually aware she's doing it. Even though it's not even enough to make a difference, all things considered, just the quieter rap of knuckles, one conscious motion out of the whole blind racket of the campus… it feels nice. 

That's probably why, after she slides on her glasses and pads across the room to open the door, she lets Jake drag her upstairs to the darkened lounge that's not as full of people (noise) as she was afraid it would be. 

Well, that and the pizza. 

//

Alright. She'll admit the pizza was good. She's happy to be back in her room, though. 

She didn't really watch the movie—too keyed-up with all the people around, even with the lights dimmed and sitting with enough distance between her and the rest of them that she can breathe. Sci-fi has never been her favorite genre, either—most of the time, the science in them (she's aware it's not actually considered science, and that the "science" isn't the point) is so cringe-inducingly wrong that she has to distract herself to avoid making embarrassing parenthetical statements that would blow her cover completely. 

She just sits there and hears Alex teasing her in high school ( _”I can't believe you're one of those people who corrects movies”_ ) and bites her tongue and fidgets with her sweatpants. 

She doesn't care much for the movie on a thematic level, either; it's too human, too _American_ and individualistic, to really make sense to her. And too insistently, even when the stakes are massive. 

"Hey." A voice interrupts her thoughts, insistent and strangely specific. Kara turns to see a blonde girl, more at-home looking than most of the other freshmen she's seen this week, leaning over to introduce herself. Across an annoyed-looking boy's lap, she notices. 

The girls sees Kara respond and grins, far too bright and too potent for the dingy upstairs lounge. "Hey, I'm Sara." 

"Oh! I’m—uh—Nice to meet you!" She finally settles on a sentence and offers Sara her hand back, acutely aware of the person they're shaking hands over. 

"Okay, Nice To Meet You." Sara replies with that (trademark) half-smirk that looks a little bit lonely. 

Kara wants to smack herself. 

She also ran into a girl from her Stats lecture. She sits in the row behind Kara, actually. They exchange "Hey"s and Kara ducks out after the end of the movie. 

The next day, she’s digging out a pen from the bottom of her bag and a familiar voice behind her says, "Hey—that’s a really pretty drawing."

It’s a drawing of the Fire Falls, actually. 

Kara stammers, Jeremiah’s lecture ringing through her head. _Don’t talk about Krypton, not even indirectly. There are still people out there who remember it. They could figure out that you’re from there and decide that they want to hurt you._  

“T—thanks!" She spins blindly in the direction of the voice. 

It’s the girl from the movie night, looking a little bit taken aback by Kara’s anxious answer. 

Kara changes tack. "Sorry, I—oh! You were at the movie last night! I didn’t catch your name." 

"Iris." She smiles, relaxing. 

"Iris, hey," Kara grins, falling a little more into the rhythm of a conversation for the first time since she got here, "I’m Kara." 

Is it bad that part of Kara hopes Iris _is_ an alien? 

// 

Sometime during the second week, she wakes up to a crunching sound—and finds her hand holding a fistful of the bed frame. 

It wasn’t completely unexpected, but it was still annoying. 

Except, it happens again. This time with the door knob to a classroom (she very carefully places it in the trash can next to the door, doesn't look around to make eye contact, and pulls the door open—mangling the frame and bolt in the process, but doing it all with one smooth, easy motion). 

A glass explodes in her hand, water and little shards everywhere. 

Her elbow goes six inches into the wall when she's a little too enthusiastic about stretching one morning. 

By the second time it happens, she's panicking. But even more than that—it’s the first time this has happened so many times in years. 

She only has time to think _Am I losing control of my powers_ a couple of times before she clamps down even harder on her own self-control and things stop randomly breaking. 

She lays awake at night with her fists clenched in her bedspread, feeling the strength pulsing in her veins, the pressure her hands exert on themselves from being closed so tight. Willing herself to bring her own strength back under control. 

She won’t ask Alex to walk her through this. She _can’t_. She’s already asked so much of Alex. She already _knows_ how to do this; Alex _taught_ her. 

_Regression_ , part of her brain supplies helpfully. 

_Stress_ , she forces back. _Transition._

She doesn’t sleep for a week, but things break less often. When she does, though, more often than not she wakes up cringing and panicking, sure she’s woken up with her heat vision on full blast, flooding the whole building and the people in it—everyone but her, the frame of the building in flames. 

Just her, laying untouched in the ashes. 

She doesn’t sleep much at all after a few of those. 

//

It'll get easier. If she can just make it through, it’ll get easier. That’s what they say. She clings to that promise. 

So of course, she finds herself slipping through the cracks. When she's walking through the old heart of campus, or back to her dorm, she thinks of the Houses—not the Great Houses themselves and their families, their heirs, their histories and feuds—the houses themselves. And then, she sees rickety wood skyscrapers and a skyline filled with pine and rapidly yellowing leaves. When she goes to bed, leaves the blinds open on her window—she thinks of the wide window in her room, curving off to the side. The dorm room curves suspiciously at the edges of her vision. 

And then a bird flies by instead of a transport, and breaks her reverie. 

And she can't help but compare college to those tests she never passed—although the more she lives through it, the more she thinks it's a false comparison. 

//

Classwork is hard to complete. Between the issues she has controlling her powers, and adjusting to a new place, and just trying to make it through the day without calling Alex, she finds herself staring at her homework—even if it's just reading—reading and re-reading each sentence multiple times until she wonders if this is in fact, not English, and not any of the other human languages she's unfamiliar with. 

She'd taken the advice of one of the counselors and taken mostly Gen Ed classes—ones she'd picked because they looked like they might be related to interesting majors. The classes are about as interesting as she could've expected. 

"Busywork" has never appealed to her. Especially once she'd managed to master English; it has no point. 

(There _is_ a point to it, she knows there’s a point to it, she tells herself. She’d gotten good at doing her homework in high school, finally, and this is just like that.) 

She tries to remind herself what she's here for—complete the Gen Ed courses, and figure out a major. She can't do that if she fails. 

But, Rao, the work she turns in—hastily scribbled down, sometimes minutes before class started, and the longer-form essays—

She's already missed a couple of those. Even with super-speed. 

Eliza and Jeremiah never once yelled at her for failing to turn in her homework, or complete an assignment. But she doesn't need them to; she can see her parents, see the entire Science Council, looking at this primitive graphite-and-paper setup, faces the serene masks she remembers, and she wants to curl up in shame. 

Which, somehow, doesn't make it any easier to finish. 

Well. Maybe she'll have better luck with the major. 

//

The "solution" that people keep proposing to her problem deciding on a major is an utterly foreign concept to her—“What's your dream job?" 

On Krypton, at most, there was _preference_. Aptitude, maybe. But the idea that a vocation or profession was some kind of deeply personal reflection of One's True Self was…

Well, it sounds kind of silly, honestly. 

So when she finds herself drawn to the science buildings, part of her knows—it's out of habit, some lingering ingrained sense of duty. The desire to fulfill what she was _supposed_ to be. 

She also feels the niggling sense of _wrongness_ that she feels when she's doing something she's not supposed to, on Earth. It's considered empty, "unoriginal”—as if the purpose of anyone's role in society was to be _original_. 

She doesn't envy Alex—she _doesn't_. She's gifted, brilliant even—for a human or any other species she's encountered. All of Eliza's inquisitiveness and Jeremiah's warmth and something more, something that's just _her_ , question after question late at night after they were supposed to be asleep. The nights where it didn't hurt to explain, the syllables didn't cut her when she sounded them out for Alex. 

When she thought, if there was anyone who was _worthy_ of what Kara was sharing with her, things that were secret but there was no point in secrets anymore--it'd be Alex. 

And she could never really convey _everything_ to Alex, but she came as close as she could. 

But she never told Alex: She was slated for the Science Council. 

"Science" was always Alex's thing. 

And—Rao—it felt good to explain their system of physics to someone who wasn't _studying_ her—not in any way that made her feel uncomfortable, at least. Alex was _always_ studying her, was always _studying_ , and Kara was nearly always okay with it, with this mind that was so completely alien to her own, how it worked and how it learned, as keen and sharp in its own way as any Kara had encountered—digesting her words, turning over every concept Kara presented to her. Looking over _her_ , like a concept or a puzzle. Maybe to humans it would've seemed like an insult, but it made Kara by turns delighted, and intrigued, and proud. 

(Barring complete social embarrassment, of course. That was the one thing that Kara never needed any help with. Also something Alex had a knack for springing on her, when they were still figuring out how to get along.) 

But it was always understood—especially after Jeremiah's death, when things became much more rigid, when they all had their role to play and had to stick to it—that she would follow in her parents' footsteps (in her _father's_ footsteps, Kara thought; Alex was always trying to fill someone else's shoes). 

It never seemed right to take _that_ away from her, or to make her feel small somehow by telling her that of course Alex was brilliant, but _Kara_ was from the House that had led the Science Council for centuries. That, if she'd continued at the pace she was at, she would've been the youngest person on the Science Council, _ever_. Not after everything Kara's arrival took from her. She deserved this thing, this one thing that Kara hadn't taken from her yet. 

That Kara never _wanted_ to own; because the Science Council is gone. 

And the Guilds. 

It's hard to believe, sometimes, that she didn't envy or resent Alex for taking this from her. But _Alex_ didn't. She never wanted to compete with Alex, or to win. 

She just wanted to go home. 

The Council— _that_ was her place. Not a human title. 

The Science Council wasn't a dream job; not about _love_ or _passion_ or some deeply-felt calling. It was part of her duty as a scion of the House of El— _the_ scion. Kal-El would've been _her_ protege, if he'd gone on to the Science Council. 

So, science (as a major, a career) had never been on the table; above and beyond maybe hurting Alex, laying claim to something that really wasn't _hers_ , not on this planet, it would've felt like cheapening what it meant to her. She'd skimmed right past those majors. 

Now, though, far enough away that she can pretend she has no obligation to anyone but herself, she indulges herself; lets herself be drawn into the science buildings and wandering the halls and—

If she has any lingering ideas about being able to find pieces of the Council here, pieces of _home_ , those few visits are enough to remind her that every piece of Krypton, apart from Kal-El and herself, is gone. The buildings here—low brick, dim fluorescent light, square, "economical" (which, Kara doesn't personally understand why "economical" is both a synonym and an excuse for ugliness), close hallways—nothing compared to the Guild-Halls on Krypton. 

And the exhibits on aliens? Make her want to tear them down and rewrite them. Half of them read more like speculative fiction or a ghost story. The other half cite some anti-alien screed on why humans are The Best And Will Conquer The Galaxy. 

Really, she thinks, they're just pissed when they find out they didn't get there first. 

No, there's not a single part of her that wants to play this game. 

// 

"Uninspired", the art teacher calls her first project. 

"Do you know how many goddamn sunset over campus pictures I've seen drawn from that spot? I get that it's a great view, believe me. But this just tells me you scribbled it down last night because you haven't bothered to do any of your homework so far. Do better." 

Kara opens and closes her mouth maybe five times before she remembers to close it and keep it shut. 

_Jerk_. 

The worst part is, he’s right. She whipped that together the night before it was due. It _was_ a really pretty sunset. 

But she _has_ been drawing all semester. This just… isn't what she's been working on. 

The art class has been the worst of the bunch. The worst because it _does_ make her want to draw. Because she can’t turn any of it in. 

Because what he says gets under her skin, needles through that thin layer of shy pretense she's managed to affix over over her life before Earth, any hint of what she was or what she lost, and what comes pouring out after—

Is Krypton. 

She tries to stop it, to draw something else, to _see_ something else; this is worlds and _worlds_ different than her plastic tubs of home that she paints to remember and keeps under her bed. She can hear Eliza (and Jeremiah and _Alex_ )— _”Don’t talk about it with anyone else. Not even indirectly."_

But this is the only thing she can offer. 

The things she knows, the things she _breathes_ , are the Fire Falls, are the slow rifts beneath her feet, the botanical gardens preserving a shadow of Krypton’s past, the air that made her lungs feel light and clean again. 

She knows acid puddles and a history rendered blurry and softened by industrial waste. She knows the shine of nuclear diamonds—entire _cities_ made of diamond—by-products of drawing on a radioactive core. As big as her fingernails, her fists—her head. A countryside that looks nothing like the history says it does. 

She draws the spires of Argo City, all over again. Of Kandor. Everything. Empty and shining. 

She draws the halls of the Temple of Rao again—almost in the style of that one poster that she sees _everywhere_ , of the cathedral that melts into the stars—but the halls are empty, melting into shards and rivers of fire, and Rao is the ocean they pour into. The arches inside it look abandoned, hollow. Untouched for years. 

That’s not how they died; she knows. They died full of people, full of dreams and thoughts and history. 

When she draws, it’s a thin crust of beauty over a monster curled up inside. 

She draws and she draws and she draws—but she can’t turn it in. 

_Therapeutic_ , Alex said. Kara knows it _should_ be. But, Rao, it’s like molten lava pouring out of her mind and there’s no real end in sight. The more she thinks she's dislodged, the more comes rising to the surface, things she hasn't thought about in years. Things she hasn't felt in this lifetime, here on Earth. 

For the first time in years, she dreams and can’t control it. And that—unconscious, out of control—is more terrifying than anything. 

She dreams of an explosion rocking her pod, a quake through her entire being, a tidal wave through the whole universe that she rode all the way to Earth. That she woke up in that pod still reeling from. 

She wakes up a lot these days with it echoing through her body again—when she sleeps anymore. 

But isn't it just what she wanted, how she can't remember stillness anymore, or quiet, or sleep—because all of those are the sound of Alex's heartbeat. 

// 

_Can I call you?_ She caves, over a weekend when it's all too much, too unregulated. _I could really use a friendly voice._  

Half an hour later, Alex calls. 

"Can… can you help me with my breathing exercises? Like you used to?" 

" _Sure_." Alex’s voice surprised and gentle on the other end of the line. " _Of course_." 

She wants—she almost asks—Alex to press the phone to her chest, so that she can hear that steady beat. If it’ll carry over the phone. 

But her voice is still more than enough; she falls asleep and her dreams are quiet and she wakes up hours later to a silent phone and, Rao, she didn’t even realize how _tired_ she was. 

She doesn’t know whether or not she should hate herself for how much _better_ she feels. Like this is somehow cheating, asking for a comfort she’s supposed to be able to do without. 

//

" _Have you maybe tried going to any clubs or anything?_ "

" _You_ think clubs are lame." 

It's worth it to hear Alex stammer. " _Well—yeah, but—that doesn't mean they can't also be_ helpful _."_

Oh, she's going to milk this for everything she can. "Uh huh. Anything else you wanna say to your _lame sister_? Eat my veggies? Math builds character? Remember to floss?" 

" _You are always welcome to eat my veggies._ " 

Kara gasps in mock-indignation. 

" _Have you actually learned anyone's name yet?_ " 

"My RA's name is Jake, thank you. And there's a girl in my Stats lecture named… Iris? Ooh—The girl who lives next door to me is named Priya." 

" _Nice. For real, though, are you doing okay?_ " 

Kara swallows. "I miss you." 

The soft exhale that Alex probably doesn't even register letting out makes the conversation feel almost normal. " _I miss you too._ " 

So she has to ruin it. "No you don't. You're too cool for that." She teases. 

" _Do too!_ " It's like a game; how many inadmissible _feelings_ can she get Alex to cop to on the phone? And just how adamantly? 

"Uh huh. I bet you're only calling me because Eliza put you up to it. You didn't even want to." 

" _I did too! I wanted to make sure you were doing okay!_ " 

"Oh, I see how it is. You’re just checking on me ’cause it’s your job." Oops. 

Alex huffs. " _Jerk. Y’know, sometimes I actually like hearing your voice. When you’re not being a brat._ " 

Kara mock-gasps. "I’m _never_ a brat!" 

" _You so are. You’re being one right now and trying to get me to say something mushy and embarrassing._ " Well, _sometimes_ it works. 

"I would _never_ do that. I know you’re far too edgy for that. I respect your edginess." 

" _You don’t respect anybody’s edginess,_ " Alex grumbles, " _Or cool._ " 

Kara huffs. "Meanie." She drums her fingers carefully for a moment. "Is it okay if I miss you?" 

" _It’s so okay if you miss me. I miss you, too._ " The quiet fierceness in her voice belies the playful tone from a moment ago. 

"Thank you." She breathes. Then, she lets a grin spread over her face. "You said it," She sing-songs.

Alex groans. " _Why do I ever do anything nice for you? Honestly._ "

//

Kara finally finds the website with the list of student groups. Which, Rao, there are a _lot_ of them—

Oh. About three-quarters of them are inactive.

She scrolls past the Young Dems (politics is _really_ not her thing on this planet), Progressive Students Union. Every single one of the fraternities and sororities (holy wow had she heard some stories, and no thank you). 

Her eye catches on the word _omega_ in an entry that's not a fraternity or sorority. 

"Omegas & Allies"? Not… the most creative name she could've imagined. But it is active. Clicking on it—it looks like they're very active, actually. And open membership. 

Maybe… maybe that would be a place to do something. She really doesn't want to get involved in politics on this planet, but… The idea that there's a group of people here, who care about this? Maybe she could learn how to make things better from them. 

There’s other groups that look mildly interesting; but those don’t make it farther than the scratchpad she has out, scribbling down the names of everything that looks promising. 

//

It takes her a couple weeks to work up the courage to actually go to one of the meetings. 

She slips in a few minutes beforehand and tries to make herself as invisible as possible. 

When she raises her gaze from her lap to look around, she notices with somewhat of a start that Iris from Stats and the floor movie night is there—and she's giving Kara kind of an odd look. Kara looks away as soon as possible. 

She had no idea that…

"Excuse me?" 

There's no "excuse" about it, though; the voice is sharp and it definitely cuts through the quiet chatter going on. 

"Um, excuse me? Space cadet?" 

Kara blinks and finds herself being glared down by a pair of murky green eyes. She momentarily forgets where she is or how to speak. 

"What are you doing here?" 

"What?" Kara stammers, caught off-guard by the venom in the girl's voice. The entire room's fallen silent. 

"What are you doing here?" She repeats. "You know what this club is, right?" 

"Y-yes?" 

"Then _why are you here_?" 

“I—I thought the group was open to everyone—“ 

"Open for you to what, walk in here and take your pick?" 

"No, I—“ 

"What, you think this is a goddamn _joke_? "Oh, isn't it cute how those omegas want _rights_?'" 

"No, I—I just want to help—“ 

"We don't _need_ your help." 

"Oh." Kara says quietly. "Okay." Her hands are suddenly in her lap, drawn away from anything (not her) breakable, fingernails dig into her palms. _Breathe_. She tries to channel Alex's voice. _Hold for four... Out for seven._  

She gets to three on the count out. "I'm sorry; am I making you _uncomfortable_? Not used to people standing up to you?" The sharpness in her voice makes it impossible to hold her focus. Everything goes from normal colors to transparent and noisy; she can suddenly hear conversations halfway across the campus.

The chair that she's sitting on suddenly seems like it's made of tissue paper. 

"Stef." The focus of the room breaks away from the two of them. An older student, male, is standing in the doorway. He does _not_ look pleased, Kara thinks; thankfully, all his attention is focused on the girl talking to her—Stef, apparently. "Do we need to have a talk about university policy?" 

"No, that’s—that's okay. I'm going." Kara takes advantage of the distraction to gather her things and leave—and if she moves a touch faster than she maybe should be able to, well, she'd just like to be out of there as soon as possible. 

It sounds like that would be appreciated, anyways. 

//

Alex's sigh when she tells her what happened says pretty much everything. 

" _You can't just—_ ” 

“—Do that, yeah, apparently." Kara sighs, stomach roiling. "I didn't _know_." 

She hates admitting it to Alex—usually because then Alex will lecture her at least three more times how she needs to be more careful about these things. 

It doesn't change the fact that she didn't _know_. Alex knows she didn't. But it doesn't change anything. 

" _I know._ " 

"It wasn't even advertised like that? It said it was open to everyone." 

" _Yeah. It's usually a policy, if a student group wants to be "official"--they have to be nominally open to everyone._ " 

"God, I can't believe I didn't _think_ of that." 

" _You had no reason to. Most people just wouldn't go near that group because it's, like… it's like people think the only reason someone who wasn't an omega would go there is to pick someone up. And that's kinda skeevy._ " 

Kara frowns, then sighs even more intently and runs her hand through her hair. "That doesn't even make sense.” Then, “God, am _I_ skeevy?" 

The answer comes to fast that Kara hasn't even finished her sentence before-- "No _. If it helps, you're probably the only person on the planet who wouldn't, but they don't know that._ " 

"God, and now they think I _did_ —“ 

" _Hey. You know why you went there, okay? There's nothing wrong with you, Kara. People just expect the worst._ " 

Kara laughs; her chest hurts like something's been scraped out of it. 

"I just want to fix it." 

Alex sucks in a breath through her teeth—and then sighs. " _I know. But that's all them, now. Okay? Just keep being you._ " 

"Okay." Kara says meekly. Then, "Cheeseball." 

Alex chuckles. 

//

She can't look Iris in the eye in Stats class the next time she sees her. 

Afterwards, there's a nudge on her shoulder. "Hey. You okay?" 

"What?" Kara startles, almost sending her glasses flying. Yeah! Yeah, I'm totally okay, peachy." She sees Iris' slightly crestfallen look and her brain kicks in. "Sorry, I'm just—I’m really sorry about the meeting, I didn't mean to upset anyone, and—“ 

"It's okay." Iris says. "I get it. Ollie and Stef argued about it afterwards. I'm sorry Stef went off on you like that." 

Kara swallows and shakes her head. "No, no, don't be. I… I wasn't thinking. It makes total sense. She had every reason to be." 

"Yeah, but you still looked like you were about to cry." She grins sympathetically, and it softens the sting of the memory. "That… didn't look fun." 

"It wasn't." Kara admits, looking down. "But, I've had worse." She steels herself and looks back up into bright green eyes. "I'm a grown-up alpha and all. I can handle it." 

Iris laughs. "Okay, if you keep _that_ up, I don't know if we can be friends." 

Kara feels a smile break out on her face in spite of everything. 

//

She has a breakthrough the week before Thanksgiving. She’s standing in line to get coffee in the campus Starbucks when she catches a glimpse of it—she’s developed a particular reaction to the word “alpha”, kind of a combination of dread and disappointment and excitement. It's getting a little old, if she's honest. 

The glorified magazine rack with the word "NEWSSTAND" attached to the wall above it must've _just_ gotten the new issue of CatCo Magazine that morning. On it, there's a picture of Cat Grant, and in glossy, dark letters—

_"The Myth of the Female Alpha"_. 

Kara's heart is racing so loudly she's fairly certain other people can hear it; it's drowning out the overwhelming noise of the campus and—

"Ma'am?" The barista's confused voice finally reaches her. Kara jumps, nearly knocking her glasses off her face. 

"Sorry—ah—“ 

"Your usual?" She prompts. There's a look of understanding there, which only makes Kara's tension level ratchet up about sixteen more notches. She nods rapidly. 

The barista smiles reassuringly and punches some buttons. Kara hands her her card. But her attention is still divided. 

Kara makes a beeline for the magazine rack when the barista hands her card back. Looks around as surreptitiously as she can manage to make sure no one's watching. No one seems to be. 

Her hands are trembling like the leaves in the strong fall wind around here—so she rips the first copy she picks up almost in half from top to bottom. She shakes her hands out, first one and then the other, and picks up another copy. 

She stares at the cover. It's been _ages_ since she actually paid much attention to CatCo. Her high school subscription seems like a lifetime ago, and focused on very different things—makeup tricks or clothing to soften the stubborn lines of muscle in her limbs. What words to use and which ones not to use. Haircuts (Alex had given her so much guff about her bangs when they were younger). 

It's not the first time she's seen a picture of Cat Grant; the woman is a household name. But she didn't know—didn't think—

Kara ends up buying two copies of the issue—the ripped one, and one she can read. Stays up all night, reading and re-reading the article. 

Forgets in the morning to act like she even needed the sleep. 

//

**The Myth of the Female Alpha**

_Welcome to our five-part series on female alphas!_

_This subject gets pretty irreverent treatment in media—if it does at all. Which, considering that female alphas alone could make up up to 5% of the population? Is a problem. Lack of general knowledge (and a healthy dose of sexism) can lead to some awkward situations, misguided assumptions, and even health issues for a group that, like the title of this series implies, often aren’t even assumed to exist._

_And, of course, because female alphas are women, and have a lot to show us about what it means to be a woman, and to be feminine._

_So, to kick this off, we’re going to start with an editorial piece by none other than Cat Grant, founder and CEO of CatCo Worldwide Media—and out female alpha, followed by a series of interviews with 10 modern-day female alphas to give you an idea what it’s like to be one of them, and the depth and breadth of their experiences, talents, and potentials._

_after that, we’ll follow up with a discussion of the top 10 myths surrounding female alphas._

_Next, we’ll have a segment on female alphas in history and literature._

_Finally, we’ll discuss exactly what it means—more or less scientifically—to be a female alpha, including some unique health challenges that female alphas face._

// 

Cat Grant. CEO of CatCo Worldwide Media. Talking about _her_ experiences of being an alpha. About being a woman in a "man’s world", a female alpha when women weren’t supposed to be that; owning who and what she is when she was supposed to be pretending to be something else. Unapologetic. 

Talking about _ethics_ and her _vocation_ as a journalist and how inseparable the two of those things are. How integral all of them are to her as a person. 

Kara eats up every single word. 

Everything after that shifts, from obscured by Krypton to the glossy pages that she keeps stashed in her bag, that she reads and re-reads and re-re-reads until the gloss starts to dull. 

It’s silly, what that little magazine gives her— _hope_ , if she had to pick a word. Like that’s what anyone reads CatCo Magazine for, is something deep and heartfelt. 

But for Kara—it’s like Cat Grant took all the walls in her brain and shattered every single one, paragraph by paragraph. 

And as she absorbs the words into her bones, starts to take apart what it is about them that makes her feel so much better, the idea starts to articulate itself: It’s not just a one-way street, regarding " _vocation_ " (she still wrinkles her nose at the word). She’s not sure how she missed it before—the way your choices and your sense of duty and belonging and right and wrong inform that choice, too. 

It’s not that the weight lifts _off_ her shoulders. But then, that wasn’t what she wanted to begin with, was it? 

//

_**How did you figure out you were an alpha?** _

A: _"I really didn’t realize until I had my first mature heat; I’m really into men, so it honestly never even occurred to me that something might be different until… You know."_  [ _laughs]_  

B: _"God, I think I had myself convinced for a few years that I just made it all up in my head. I mean, it’s not like there’s much of a difference unless you’re in heat or spending some serious quality time with an omega in heat. I got really worked up about landing an alpha as a teenager, and it just… never seemed to work. Neither of us was into it and I never really wanted to share heats—I think I was pretty worried about them freaking out. Shit,_ I _was freaking out."_  

D: _"Things are more conservative where I’m from, so it was pretty obvious from an early age that something was different. It was always, "It’s a shame she’s so strong—or aggressive or what have you—she should’ve been a boy"; "Keep that one away from the hens; she looks like a little wolf". And the funny thing is, I’m not even particularly any of those things! I was just a tomboy. I always had my pack, though, and I think that made it all a bit easier when I finally did present. I had a lot of really great guys around me who weren’t weirded out and who were happy to have me around."_  

//

_**What do you do for a living and do you feel like that is part of how you express your genera?** _

A: _"Nah, not really—but I think it does motivate me every day to work towards what I do want to do. Knowing it’s going to be an uphill battle makes me willing to accept situations that are hard to keep up hope in, keep myself focused, and it helps remind me that sometimes we do what we have to to survive. Hopefully long enough to make it to the next level."_  

D: _"I’m a soldier and I definitely do feel that way. I may not be bonded to an omega, but I have my pack, y’know? And we look out for each other and we protect each other, and we put ourselves on the line for each other and for our people. I definitely feel like that’s something fundamental about being an alpha, not just "being in charge" but being present, being willing to sacrifice, being willing to sweat and bleed and train and hurt to make sure our people are safe."_  

B: _"I work as a nurse’s assistant currently, but I’ve been in various healthcare jobs and I can say that it certainly satisfies something for me. Obviously, I do have other needs that I go elsewhere for. And within my job, I ultimately answer to a higher authority. But, strangely—taking care of people, making sure they’re comfortable, helping them get well or fight their fight or spend whatever time they have left with dignity—I do feel like I’m there to advocate for them, I have a responsibility towards them, I’m doing the real work, which isn’t always pretty or uplifting. But it gives me a sense of purpose_  

_“I’ve been told that that’s such a "feminine" approach to being an alpha, but I’m not so sure? I mean, sure, you have powerful politicians and businessmen who are alphas, people who are incredibly self-centered and focused on their personal gain or advancement—being the shot-caller. But it’s a truism that I was taught growing up and I think it applies to alphas as well—that ultimately what’s satisfying is helping others. It’s pro-social, it has to be in order to be healthy. Apart from that? You can make whatever you want out of it."_  

C: _"I’m calling the shots. That’s what it boils down to. I’m the one who gets to make the call—but I’m the one the pressure’s on to make the right call. That makes me feel alive, right there: My people are depending on me to make the right call. That my leadership is reflected in their performance and their conduct, and if I want to believe their conduct reflects on me as a leader, it has to operate both ways."_

// 

_**Do you have difficulty finding a mate or a partner?** _

A: _"By now, I’ve basically got a speech that I give anyone it seems like things might get serious with. [laughs] Of course, some guys get really defensive when you have the gall to suggest they might be anything less than the alpha-est alpha ever to alpha—even if they’re in full-on unsuppressed omega heat. But I’ve found with the ones who don’t take it badly, they’re almost relieved that they don’t have to be the ones to bring it up."_  

**D’you feel bad for the ones who don’t take it well?**  

A: _“Y’know, I used to, ‘cause of course those guys probably had a rough time. But I figure, if you want to play with an alpha, don’t pretend. Don’t drag someone else down playing games. Especially in that non-traditional setting; you’ve both been through a lot to get to where you are. Don’t ask me to pretend to be something I’m not just because you can’t handle certain facts about yourself.”_  

**How about you? Do you have difficulty finding a mate or partner?**

B: _“Uh, definitely. [laughs] Sorry. Guys can be so difficult, like being with a female alpha makes them less manly or whatever? But even girls, too; I’ve had more girls than I’d like to count freeze up on me when I told them. ‘Cause the anatomy, I’m assuming. Whether or not my pants are still on. Makes a girl hesitant to be upfront about these things.”_  

C: _“Honestly, I’ve kind of given up on a mate, at least for right now. But big cities tend to have at least a few heat-friendly clubs. It’s such a huge relief, honestly, knowing that you don’t have to be looking for someone to tie yourself to for the rest of your life just so your life isn’t earth-shakingly awful two or three times a year. That kind of thing wears on a person over time.”_  

//

_**D'you think that the combination of your gender and your genera has affected your search for a mate? How?** _

A: _“I’ve had a lot more dates since the internet became a thing, that’s for sure. [laughs]”_

_//_

Kara almost doesn’t go back for Thanksgiving break. She’s not sure if she wants to see Alex. If she’s ready to. But, she decides, she has to. She can’t avoid her forever and she wants to make things _better_. So she goes. 

It never once occurs to her that Alex might not be there. 

She should be relieved, she thinks, sitting up in her room staring at the text from Alex: _Have to catch up on lab stuff before finals. Sorry I couldn't make it. :/_ All the stress and the worry—she should be relieved that she can't mess anything up further between them. 

Instead, though, she keeps looking out the window, looking at her phone. 

Wondering if things are already broken beyond fixing. Wondering if she has a right to even care.

//

_**Rejection. Go.** _

_A: “Is that what you meant by that question about masculinity and status earlier? [laughs] In that case, yeah, I do think there’s this idea that omegas are there to service an alpha’s dick. And because that’s so… synonymous? With masculinity, men in general are a lot less likely to be able to separate “want” from “owed”. Which—you aren’t. No one is. Don’t get me wrong, heat is painful, even on suppressants—but especially in this day and age, you’ll live if you have to go it alone. If someone doesn’t want to do something with you, you’re not owed that. Suck it up and buy suppressants. Sit with it as long as you have to; trust me, it’s better than being a douche in the heat of the moment._

_“And you’d think, maybe, that female alphas would be better about that? A lot of times they’re not. Because they’ve still learned that omegas are there to service alpha cock and they think they’re owed that as an alpha, too.”_

D: _“[laughs] Buddy, if I can deal with it, so can you.”_  

B: _“Ouch. Well, I know a lot of times that first… whatever you want to call it… the first omega you have feelings for tends to really drive home that being an alpha means something. And not in a stupid “You’re my better half” way. People are social, they aren’t themselves by themselves. Y’know?_  

_“But I know that doesn’t usually ever work out. The way we’ve organized ourselves is really not helpful, either; either we’re talking on a scale that’s way too large or way too small. So a lot of times you end up on your own, or at least it feels that way._  

_“If you’re not a better person without them, that alpha you feel like you want to be when you’re around them—Chances are you’re not that person when you’re around them, either. And as long as you keep moping—which is not at all the same as feeling sad, btw—you aren’t becoming that person, either. It’s not on them to keep making you into that person._  

_“And some people react so poorly that you know it was never about being a better person. If you being a “good person” is contingent on getting exactly what you want… you’re not that great of a person. Even if things are going well._  

_“They inspire you? Good. The rest is up to you. Whether or not they’re there.”_  

//

It's fitting, in what seems like the worst way. _Whether or not they're there._  

Well, that's not in any doubt, at least. 

_That alpha you feel like you want to be when you’re around them_ —Kara doesn't even know what that is. Ever since she became aware of—of _this_ , she's spent most of her time trying to get away from it—away from Alex—and then missing her like something's been cut out of her. It's never been a question of what she wanted, what she felt like she could be. 

Mostly, she just didn't want to be an alpha. It's a bit unrealistic to want—but it didn't really stop her from low-key wishing, on some level. Not the way she's seen it done by (what seemed like) everyone around her. After this, though, she's not so sure that there aren't any alternatives. 

There's just that problem of— _that alpha you want to be_ makes it sound like there's even a single positive experience she has to go off of. 

And, sitting in her old bedroom in the Midvale mid-November nighttime, it's not a question she knows how to go about answering, either. 

_People aren’t themselves by themselves. Y’know?_  

Actually, Kara thinks, she does know. 

_El mayarah_. 

// 

This is pure self-torment, she knows. But her first instinct is to go lay down on Alex’s old bed and see if there’s something she remembers. 

She’s forgotten she hasn’t been in Alex’s bed since _that evening_. 

Thankfully, the heat-scent is gone—another thing she didn’t account for, if it had been there. But, she grabs one of Alex’s pillows and curls around it, late at night, and breathes. 

Torment is definitely one word for it. 

Seeing a text from her or even hearing Alex’s voice is one thing. Surrounded by her scent? Is like being wrapped up in memories. Is like every pore aches to be wrapped up in the real thing. Like her body remembers something missing, something vital, something mortal. 

It’s almost enough to make her give up and slink back to her room. How can a want this visceral be anything but a violation? But no; she knows what she’s about here. She _does_. 

It makes her shrink with shame, remembering how she doesn’t _really_ know—where she crossed the line into inappropriate. Where she pushed too far. She’s not sure if she trusts her perceptions; reading people (humans, at least) has never been her strong suit. She’d always trusted herself with Alex, though—before that night. 

But before she crossed that line, turned it into whatever it was—

It was Alex’s hand dragging gently on the skin of Kara’s forearm. Her body tucked back against Kara’s, Kara breathing and letting Alex move her where she needed to. 

(Kara’s chest aches, her arms ache, every part of her so empty. So _useless_.) 

It was comfort. It was being safe, because she could be. Because she owes Alex everything. Because she loves Alex. 

Because something about her made her able to help. 

(If only she didn’t _want_ like something animal, something gut-level, something about _survival_. Something so strong it reminds her of splintered wood in her hands, of exploding glass, of scorch marks and buckled plaster.) 

(How can anything about her be _safe_?) 

And the same with Calvin, she remembers from the next year. It’s just something she can _do_ , if she’s aware—she can make herself safe. She can help make them feel safe. 

( _We don’t_ need _your help._ ) 

Heck if she knows when she does or when she doesn’t, though. 

//

Her end-of-semester portfolio for her Art class haunts her. She has more than the number of required pieces—almost triple, actually—but all of them (with the exception of that first piece that apparently doesn't count) are of Krypton. She's either going to have to buck up and turn those in, or be incredibly productive over the next month. 

She already knows she's going to at least try for the latter. 

At least something’s eased inside her, after break, after the magazine; if nothing else, she has a question to work on, a problem. 

So maybe that’s why she doesn’t immediately freak out when she sees Alex staring back at her from the page. It was the other thing she’d been trying to avoid; everything before Earth was loss, and everything after her arrival is Alex. She didn’t need to be a creep on top of everything else. 

She thinks she gets it, though; it’s not about _Alex_ , or the sharp ache that echoes in her chest looking at that _don’t fuck with me_ stare looking back unflinching. 

It’s not neat, or clear; the answers she’s looking for are tangled up in faces and places she can’t go back to. At the very least, she has to allow herself that. If only to get to a starting point. 

Nothing about her exists in isolation. She’s still going to have to go digging through it. 

//

Alex comes back for Christmas. And by then, CatCo’s put out another issue of the series, and Kara curls up in her seat on the plane with the magazine and tries to ignore the fireworks in her stomach, the sweat on her palms, as she gets closer to home. Tries to pretend she isn’t carefully tracking the path of their flight in the back of her head. 

It’s Alex who comes to pick her up; Kara picks out her heartbeat well before she catches a glimpse of a familiar black hoodie and skinny jeans. 

"Hey!" It’s all she can seem to do, is stand there and stare stupidly at her with this giant stupid grin on her face

"Hey." Alex smiles back at her, that familiar grin weary from the semester. 

She looks older, Kara thinks—not in a bad way, or even a particularly good way, just… grown up? Kara can see the small shifts in her face, stress and bone structure and exhaustion and she still somehow looks as fierce as she always does. 

She should feel happy to see her, Kara thinks. She _does_ feel happy to see her. 

But it’s a little bit like coming home to find that someone else has moved in and everything’s been rearranged while she’s been away. Alex smiles at her—and Kara’s heart can’t help but soar—but Alex is _different_. They’re both different. The silence between them is familiar, but there’s a jaggedness to it, somehow. 

Kara can’t even begin to unpack how painful it is, when the feeling hits her that her safe place ever since she came to Earth, her touchstone, is suddenly kind of a stranger. Scent familiar but different. Here, but gone. 

Still. On the ride home, talking carefully with this new version of Alex, feeling the way _she’s_ changed, herself, even while she was looking, the way she talks now, the way she thinks and responds after all the _thinking_ she’s done this semester—it’s like their broken pieces rest tentatively against each other, and it’s okay if they don’t quite know what to say. 

//

Kara stares at the computer screen and swallows hard. 

She knew her grades weren’t going to be great, but this is a little worse than what she was expecting (and, honest, she’d felt _less_ optimistic and more concerned and gotten _better_ grades). 

Also could very well mean academic probation. She’s not sure what the threshold is for that. 

She’s never actually _failed_ a class before now. Let alone multiple. 

The bubble of hope she’s been living in ever since she found that issue of CatCo Mag bursts and she wants to curl up under the desk and cry. 

At least she passed art, some part of her thinks bitterly. Objectively the easiest of the bunch. Especially for her. 

She felt like things were starting to get _better_. What _happened_? 

She buries her face in her hands. 

Eliza’s going to be so disappointed. 

// 

Alex’s anxiety level skyrockets when Kara steps into the room to tell her beforehand. She’s pretty sure it’s because she’s literally curled in on herself and trying not to cry, but she can’t be one hundred percent sure, so she hangs back near the door--at least until Alex reaches for her hand, worry written all over her face. 

She knows it’s a little bit dramatic, directing Alex to her laptop sitting on her desk and then folding up into the smallest shape she can manage on her bed, but it’s not exaggerated, either. Alex frowns, looking things over—and then her face smoothes over with realization, her eyes fluttering shut momentarily. 

Kara scoots back across her mattress until her back hits the wall. 

After a moment, Alex climbs onto the bed with her, settling in next to her, close enough that Kara can feel the warmth radiating from her shoulder and upper arm. The closeness makes her ache. 

"Hey," Alex starts quietly. 

Kara has to close her eyes and blink back tears. She’s so _stupid_ , and she’s being so clingy, coming to Alex for _everything_ , and Alex is still being so nice to her. 

"I’m sorry," She whispers. 

"Don’t be," Alex says, "What happened?" 

Kara gives a short half-laugh and sniffles. "You mean other than I’m just dumb on this planet?" 

"You come from a society so advanced that you thought my dad’s laptop when you got here was a fossil. You were literally genetically engineered to be super-smart. Kinda doubt that." Her fingers play tentatively at Kara’s shoulder. Kara leans into the touch, hating herself a little for how much better it makes her feel in spite of everything. Alex’s arm slides entirely around her shoulders, squeezing gently—well, for her, at least. "Did something happen?" 

Kara shrugs and opens her mouth to answer—and feels what’s probably a sob catch in her throat. She ducks her head and brings up one hand to bury her face in. 

Alex’s grip gets fiercer, her hand squeezing Kara’s shoulder. 

When she can trust herself not to just break down in tears, she pulls her hand down somewhat, and shrugs helplessly. "No." It’s all she can manage. And then she’s crying. 

"Hey. Hey." Alex murmurs soothingly. "It’s okay. We’ll figure it out, alright? We’ll figure it out." 

//

Eliza waits until Kara leaves for a bit to chew Alex out, after Kara tells her. Kara comes back faster than she was expecting, though—she can hear Eliza’s voice from down by the water, and it was Alex’s heart rate that caught her attention. She might’ve also been paying attention. Waiting. 

She doesn’t understand why Eliza gets like this. 

“I can’t believe you allowed this to happen, Alexandra.” 

“Allowed?? She hasn’t talked to me at _all_ this semester. How was I supposed to know??” 

“Then why didn’t you check in on her?” 

“ _I did!_ ” 

“You just said she hasn’t spoken to you all semester. Which is it?” 

“I checked on her! She just… she didn’t contact me, or ask me for help, or _anything_. She just asked me for help with her breathing exercises one time. She didn’t mention she was having trouble, and she… she _sounded_ fine. Was I supposed to just… not believe her? Keep poking into her life even if she didn’t want to be bothered?” 

“How can you _think_ that? You know how she is with new places—“ 

“I know how she was with new places when she was _twelve_. She’s _eighteen_ , Mom, and it was her first semester at college. If she wants to spread her wings, why should I get in the way?” 

“She’s been on this planet for _six years_ , Alexandra. Less than a decade. And with what she’s been through—“ 

“But she’s _not_ six years old! She doesn’t need some… overprotective pseudo-parental figure!” 

“No, she needs a _sister_!” 

Alex is silent. Kara’s heart pounds. Breaks. 

“How do you expect me to manage being her main support from across the country _and_ do the kind of accelerated schedule that I’m doing now, Mom?” She asks quietly. 

“All I’m asking is for you to call her once a week and make sure she’s not falling apart!” 

“And what if she just… tells me she’s fine? I’m supposed to, what, not believe her?” 

“I think we know at this point that _fine_ isn’t always _fine_.” 

Alex lets out a huff of breath that might be a laugh. “I can’t believe this.” 

“What, is once a week too _much_ for you?” 

“This isn’t right! She’s not a child that needs babysitting and if she was, you wouldn’t have let her leave!” 

Kara takes a deep breath. 

“She’s right.” 

Their eyes snap to her as she steps into the room, and she gulps, the arguments and anger in her head liquefying. She’s the one with laser vision, but that look is way more terrifying. Especially from both of them at once. “Alex is right.” She stalls, trying to buy time to get her thoughts back together. 

“I told her I was okay, and that needs to be enough. I’m responsible for asking for help if I need it, Eliza.” She tries to keep her voice from shaking. 

“Then why _didn’t_ you, sweetheart?” 

Kara’s throat closes. She shrugs helplessly. “I had to try.” 

Alex snorts and mutters under her breath. _”Dork.”_ Eliza sighs and puts a hand to her forehead. 

“Well, next time, please, ask for help. I know it may not seem very important now, but this is your _future_ , Kara.” 

“So I’ve been hearing all semester.” She quips. Eliza and Alex both smile, and some of the tension drains out of the room. Eliza holds out her arms. 

“Come here, sweetheart.” Kara buries her face in Eliza’s shoulder. “I’m just worried about you.” 

“Well, I’m not the one on track to have a doctorate before age thirty.” 

“No. But you have things that you’re struggling with, too.” 

“I’m going to have them the rest of my life, Eliza.” Her voice falls back into that measured, melodic composure that reminds her of singing diamond spires and red, red light; blue robes and liquid sounds on her tongue. “Alex can’t be there for all of that.” 

Eliza’s hands still; tighten. Her breath rushes out, like it hurts. “I wish I could make it different somehow.” 

She hears Alex shift next to them and snort, sarcasm recovered. “God, you guys are sappy. I’m going to bed.” Kara breathes a sigh of relief as Alex slips out while they’re hugging and Eliza’s reassuring her, and talks with Eliza until Alex is safely in her room. 

//

She raps softly on Alex’s door after she excuses herself from her conversation with Eliza. 

Alex opens the door partway and leans against the frame. 

“Hey. Are you alright?” The question is pretty pointless; Alex is always “alright” after arguing with Eliza like this. It’s just a question of how many plates she needs to break. Metaphorically. 

Usually. 

“I’m sorry I got you yelled at. It wasn’t your fault.” 

Alex sighs. “Were you listening the whole time?” 

Kara nods. “I knew she was going to. I don’t understand why she blames you.” 

Alex looks down. Sighs again. Leans harder on the doorframe. Lets the door open all the way so she can cross her free arm over her body. “You didn’t have to.” 

“Yeah, I kinda did. She needs to stop holding you responsible for everything I do.” 

“You didn’t choose to fail those classes.” 

“You didn’t neglect me, either.” 

Alex is silent for a long moment. “You know… you know I’m there for you, right?” 

It’s like a stone drops into the pit of Kara’s stomach. “Of course!” To her actual detriment, sometimes. “But—you’re trying to get a doctorate in record time, it seems like—” 

“Won’t be a record, actually.” Alex supplies dryly. 

“—Still. And I’m… the stuff I’m dealing with… I’m always going to have it. You and Eliza, you’ve taken such good care of me, but if I can’t learn to cope on my own… how am I ever gonna function?” 

Alex looks at her through her hair. “You’re not on your own.” She says quietly. “ _El mayarah_ , right?” 

Kara can clearly hear the hitch in her own breath. Can feel her heart stop for the surge of pure _feeling_ that rips through her, hearing those words from someone else. Maybe one of the only people alive who has any approximation of what it actually _means_. 

The word “gut-punch” comes to mind, but gut-punching doesn’t really affect her. This… 

“That’s not fair.” Kara half-breathes, half-laughs, one hand on the door frame to steady herself. Which puts her hand millimeters from Alex’s, where _she’s_ leaning. Kara has to tear her gaze away, blinking to clear her vision, and finds Alex’s eyes shining back at her. _There you are_ , Kara thinks; that fragile little light flickering in the tired hollows of Alex’s face. “I don’t get to look out for you, too?” 

“Nope,” Alex smirks, “Not in the contract.” 

Kara’s chest constricts painfully, or maybe it just fills with so much emotion it feels about to burst. Something like familiarity and pride. That’s her Alex. _Her Alex_. She can’t even manage to freak out about the thought. 

“Hate to break it to you, but _El mayarah_ does _not_ mean “burning the candle at all four ends to uphold unrealistic expectations.’” Her gaze keeps sliding back to their hands on the doorframe. 

So does Alex’s. “Candle only has two ends.” 

“You would invent two more just so you could burn them.” 

Alex huffs, but she doesn’t say anything, because something seems to have hit a critical mass between their hands where they’re leaning on the doorframe. Kara watches their hands shift just enough that Alex’s thumb is anchored over hers and Kara’s thumb is brushing the side of Alex’s index finger. Like it has nothing to do with either of them. Like it’s just gravity. 

They used to touch all the time, for no reason other than they were in the same room. They haven’t just _touched_ since… 

Since last Thanksgiving. 

“Jerk.” Alex says finally, but her voice is soft, her eyes locked on their joined hands; it comes out like an afterthought, or a delayed reaction. Kara laughs softly. 

Alex makes a face at her, honest-to-god _blushing_. 

Kara’s far more familiar with the loaded wire-taut coil of heat (and all the guilt that comes with it), but the urge to just _kiss_ Alex— _that’s_ what that was, this whole time—is new and bright and overwhelmingly _good_. 

Kara’s frozen to the spot (that’s definitely for the better), so it must be Alex who leans in and wraps her arms around Kara and buries her face in her shoulder. Or maybe it’s both of them, because Alex _has_ to be the dominant hugger when she goes for it, and Kara’s arms are definitely on the outside—or did Kara grow again recently? She’s not sure. 

It doesn’t seem like it should work this way; how after the breathless moments before, the warmth and the closeness and _Alex_ makes her feel like she can finally breathe, and she could stay here wrapped around Alex’s fragile-feeling bones and her thrumming heartbeat until she re-learns the feel of Alex’s body thinned out by stress and exhaustion in her arms. 

It’s a lie, she thinks, that Alex is fragile. 

“Thank you,” She says. 

Alex frowns when she pulls back, that smile still lingering. “For what?” 

Kara shrugs. “For everything. For looking out for me. For… for being my sister.” She finishes apologetically, putting the offer out there. 

What else is she going to say? 

_For being my heart. For being my everything._ All the things they’re not supposed to be. All the things Alex doesn’t want from Kara. 

Alex swallows, going strangely still; her smile turns strained. “Right. Of course. Who else is gonna bail your ass out when you get in over your head?” She smiles crookedly. 

Kara’s heart sinks. She pulls away, a jumble of confusion and ache and bone-deep satisfaction, while they say goodnight. 

Somehow, nothing she says ever manages to be the right thing, she thinks as she ducks away and into her room. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep--Sara, Iris, and Ollie = Sara Lance, Iris West, Oliver Queen. For some reason, I can't stop making these hypermasculine male-power-fantasy-type characters into omegas. 
> 
> If you haven't already picked up on it--I do sometimes play fast and loose with time between chapters, for the sake of sticking with one "thread" per chapter (and for my word count). This chapter and the next one especially will have some overlap. 
> 
> Also, I wish I'd known that "genera" was a thing in ABO-verse before writing this chapter. Although I guess that's what I get for having a limited exposure to ABO. 
> 
> Shoutout to Satan for continuing to send me Horrible Ideas(TM).


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Interlude one: Calvin
> 
> OR
> 
> Kara Learning About Being An Alpha, Part One
> 
> OR
> 
> Embarrassing Stories Kara Has Never Told Anyone, Ever. Nope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh man. So, I got really sidetracked by RL, and that has not stopped. Going to offload a couple of chapters here because they give context for the chapters that follow (which are actually mostly written, and have been for the better part of a year, haha, fml). The next chapter in particular contains a *ton* of worldbuilding, so I wanted to soften that with this piece. 
> 
> CONTENT WARNINGS: Knots make an appearance, specifically Kara's. Explicit descriptions of embarrassing sexual situations (F/M, A/O). Both characters involved are underage (shifting tags around to reflect that better). The two characters that interact in this chapter are Kara and Calvin, but there's a lot of internal shifting around for Kara. 
> 
> ... And I'm going to go here. I feel like it's really important to point out that, whatever anyone else may be getting out of this, the point of this story for me, and the thing in my mind when I'm writing it, is that this is about Kara's journey--like pretty much the entire premise of _Supergirl_. This is Kara learning--about herself, about the world around her, and about this thing that she's found herself part of, without ever meaning to. I also felt like, at this point, I needed to give this poor kid a little positive affirmation, and a hint that while there is a lot of garbage that she's inherited, she's not trapped, or doomed, like the last few chapters before this have kind of leaned towards.

She doesn't see Calvin again for awhile; stops looking for him. Guess tagging along with her to get away from Brad was mostly just a convenience thing (it had been, she always knew it was—why is she bummed about it?).

She hangs onto the memory, though. Wonders if he still goes there, occasionally—Midvale is, well, mid-sized (apparently), but the schools are still small enough that she knows most of the faces there. She doesn't see him. 

She likes to think it made a difference. Not a huge one, but helping someone feel safe? 

_Earth doesn't need another Superman. Earth just needs Kara Danvers._

She’s not sure what “Kara Danvers” can do. She never was; not then, and definitely not now. But maybe this is something that she can do. If she can figure out how. 

And then she spies him again at a rally. Slipping between the people. She catches his eye and grins at him; he looks at her with a kind of confused recognition, like he doesn’t actually remember their previous interactions but he remembers her face, and Kara deflates. 

Not too long after, though—the next week, maybe—she’s headed out to her car after the last bell rings. 

"Hey!" A familiar voice says. Kara jerks her head up to see Calvin grinning at her like whatever happened last week was an illusion. Kara can't help but grin right back. "Kara, right?" 

… They did only interact once. Kara nods. "Hey! Yeah. How goes?" She catches herself "--It? How's it going?" 

Either he pretends he didn't hear that, or it went right past him. He pushes his fingers through his hair and looks at her sheepishly. "Um, well—I was wondering if I could get a ride with you? My car broke down last week and it’s still getting fixed. I've been bumming off my friend, but he's out today." 

Kara immediately feels her chest loosen. "Yeah! Sure! Definitely." 

"Sweet!" 

// 

He bums a ride off her for the next three or four days—into the next school week. Their trips start taking a detour to a convenience store not too far from where he lives for him to buy cigarettes (she knows he’s seventeen, but Kara doesn't say anything—she’s just driving) or some kind of snack. And then end up turning into smoke breaks.

They end up pulled off to the side on one of the roads that winds around by the ocean—not enough beach for it to _be_ a beach, but there's a wide spot and he asks her to pull off because "it’s been one of those days", and if she’s honest, she doesn't have a lot that she’d rather be doing, and she kind of likes feeling useful. Doesn’t mind being dragged along to do nothing—Calvin is quick, and sharp, and she’s not sure why he picked her, because they don’t have much to talk about, but she doesn’t mind listening to him talk. 

She supposes—minus the cigarettes—he reminds her of someone. 

The sunlight coming down soaks into her. She breathes and thinks she hasn't taken the opportunity to meditate in this light the way she could. 

"I've been feeling a little out of it the last couple days," He admits, taking another drag of the cigarette. Kara can't say that she's _fond_ of the scent, but it's strong, masks other scents—and it's not like it's toxic to her, the way it is to humans. 

There’s a weight to what he says, something that has her hanging onto his next words, his next breath. But for what, she’s not sure. His voice sounds as indifferent as ever. _Indifferent as—no._ No. She does her best not to flash back to a stack of silvery rings along the shell of one ear (Eliza would’ve killed Alex if they’d been real) and Alex’s profile, finding her after school with some of her other friends. 

Her stomach does this thing, every time there’s one of these moments, something significant but she doesn't know what, and he doesn't say. Not just her usual anxious reaction; louder and more insistent over the last few days, and this one takes the cake. She’s not sure if it’s the memory of Alex’s feigned indifference that sets it off, or the other way round. 

"I'm sorry," Kara replies, sincere, "You should take the day off tomorrow. No school." 

He look at her, and Kara could swear his eyes are even darker than they were two minutes ago. 

"You're an odd one." He says, and she's never had someone use _quite_ that phrasing before, but the sentiment is still quite familiar. 

Kara shrugs, picking at the steering wheel. She’s missing something here. "You should take care of yourself. It's important." 

The cigarette crackles. Her stomach does the thing again, her senses zeroing in on the sound, the glow, the body of the cigarette, burning down faster while he inhales. Consumed. “That’s sweet of you.” He sounds amused, but he’s lacking his usual level of sarcasm. 

Kara’s _really_ missing something here. 

“But I think you’ve got what I need.” 

Kara has a moment where heat flashes through her stomach—the way he says it, low and quiet, almost to himself—

Calvin leans in close, like he’s going to whisper something in her ear, and Kara _has_ to hear what it is he wants to tell her. There’s a tension in the pit of her stomach, something like sureness, something like nerves—She has to be sure. 

And—Oh. _Oh._ Now that he’s close, she can smell it, have it register, not just the side effects. The tension in her stomach. The nerves. The weird amount of patience she's had, spending this much time with a complete stranger and never quite _clicking_. It clicks now. 

There’s the scent of cigarette smoke, thick and overwhelming, clinging to his skin like a layer of ash, but underneath—

Her hands tighten on the steering wheel until it groans. 

Under the layer of smoke—clever, how the smoke settles into his pores and his clothes and drowns out the scent slowly climbing out of his skin, even to her Kryptonian senses—

He smells like desperation; something heady, hazy, that makes her dizzy. 

“ _Alpha_.” He murmurs softly against the shell of her ear. 

_Oh._

It almost doesn’t register as the same thing she feels so guilty over, on the regular—all she knows is the warmth in his voice, the way he says it, lingers on it. Like he knows something about her, something she didn’t. The way his body reacts to it. The way _her_ body reacts to it. 

So maybe that’s why she freezes, follows his lead. It’s right like speaking in a register she didn’t know she had. Misses all her warning signs, doesn’t trip any of the alarms. He just whispers a word in her ear, that word, and it doesn’t sound like anything she’s ever heard before, because it’s not, not with this inflection, like a sigh; not with the rich warm hum in his throat, the little break in his voice ( _al_ -pha) that even he might not hear; and definitely not like someone acknowledging something that’s been in the air between them this whole time just hiding in the smoke.  

His whole body relaxes with it like just saying it is soothing. She never thought this thing about her could be _soothing_. Could make someone confident the way his free hand rests on her far shoulder, feverish even against her skin, heat from his body spilling over one side of her and leaving her other side almost chilled, electric shocks rippling out from where he’s touching her. 

It never clicked before—this is what she _is_. To someone. To him. To someone like him. What she can be. Something so very _relevant_ , that makes his body sing like _that_. 

She wants to know what that is. Wants to be that. 

He’s quick—and Kara, all her focus on the sound of his voice, this one thing, this one part of her that he’s called out, moves with him, moves _for_ him; grabs onto his thighs to steady him, even, as he slings himself over to straddle Kara’s lap. Something distant in her brain jangles with alarm. It’s so far away from here, though; and there’s a force that radiates out of his skin that pushes it all even farther. The scent is all mixed up—smoke and heady pheromones, and her brain ricochets back and forth between the two. One moment it’s seemingly the smoke that has her curling an arm around him to pull him in, and the next it’s something different, a little like sweat but richer, thicker, _better_ , and it fills her head with a roaring sound, a drowning sound, closing over her fast—and the next moment, she’s licking at his skin and tasting salt and ash. 

He’s warm, even through his clothes, against Kara’s skin. His hands are buried in her hair and even if he’s borderline scrawny, his body gives under her hands, tension melting away, and she realizes he wasn't lying, this isn’t a joke or a prank. What he called her, what it means to him—it's real, it’s significant. It’s _good_. 

What else can she do? The way he says it makes it sound like she could pull down stars, could give him everything he needs, and it makes something inside her clench in sympathy, hurt, with the racing of his heart and the needy tension in his body, the way his skin burns under her hands. The way he _put_ himself there. 

She digs her fingers into his thighs experimentally; he hisses out a breath, spreads his legs (as much as he can, between the console and the door—shit. They’re going to have to move). She scratches her fingers up and down them, pressing, and his muscles tremble hungrily as the pressure passes over them. She runs her fingers up to the top of his jeans. He pulls his shirt off. 

She thought the scent was strong _before_ ; with all that skin uncovered? A wave of acrid-tinged want, heady and burnt all at the same time, fills her senses. That sympathetic tension, like she's holding her breath until he’s okay, dissolves under a tidal surge of something darker. Or maybe just swells until she _has_ to, has to make it okay. Has to lean in and drown in it, put her hands on that bare skin and drag him closer, a little ridiculous considering the confines of the seat. Lean in, and leave the imprint of her teeth on his skin. A bruise. Maybe even blood. 

She’s tried not to pay attention to the details, before, hearing about it on TV, in classes, books, magazines, but all strung together like this—it makes sense. Seems right in a way it didn't before. Makes her vision do something funny, the mental image of a bite mark on his neck, a purpling bruise. She doesn’t think he’ll mind—

He shivers, tilts his chin up, like he can feel her think it. 

She does lean in, and she does let herself nuzzle the curve of his neck, open her mouth, scrape with her teeth so delicately, and his chest heaves, a tremor running through him. _Oh_. Oh—she’s right. 

" _Alpha_." 

It’s a moment before she realizes the growl in her ears is coming from her. 

She has him up against the steering wheel, she realizes. He's arched a little so he doesn't press on the horn—her hands are under his back, too, so that helps—and his knees are wedged awkwardly past her waist, an approximation of wrapped-around that leaves them—

Holy shit. She can feel the heat bleeding off him through his pants. Hotter than the rest of him, if that's possible. And he's not even inches away from her, just clothes keeping them apart, between her and the place that she can feel needy and aching like it’s her own body. He's shivering a little, and not from chills. Grinds against her, arches between her and the steering wheel, and _fuck_. _Fuck_. 

She was _not_ planning on any kind of rut, sympathetic or otherwise, and girl-jeans are not manufactured with alphas in mind. Her jeans are painfully tight in what feels like a very short time. 

She fumbles one hand into her lap, and either she used too much of her strength, or her jeans have just had enough abuse, because the top snap comes off in her hand. _Crap_. The pressure eases a little, though. Momentarily. Calvin picks up on what she's doing and squirms above her a little, and her knot seems to take advantage of the extra give and she finds herself biting back a swear and trying to get the stupid zipper down one-handed so she can just _breathe_. 

Calvin shifts back— _Wait, what? No, come back_ —and then his hand is down between them and closing on her knot. 

The sound Kara makes burns itself into her ears and will probably mortify her for the rest of her life. She drops her hand uselessly next to her, away from either of them. 

There’s a creaking-squealing sound from beside her. _Crap_. She hopes she can still drive out of this mess afterwards. 

“Holy fuck, that’s hot.” Calvin’s pulled back and staring down at the console, where the entire thing is ruined in an almost perfect imprint of her curled hand. She's pulsing against his grip, muscles in her stomach twitching. Pushes into his hand despite the flood of awareness. 

That jangling alarmed feeling comes back—distant, muted, but slipping back into her consciousness like an ice cube down her spine. Twisted metal and broken glass and— “I—I could hurt you.” Like this, when she’s not thinking? When all he did was put his _hand_ on her? She curls her fingers into the palms of her hands, digging her nails in, just to be sure she’s not breaking anything else. 

He turns his gaze back to her, surprise resolved into a smirk. “Only in ways I want you to.” He purrs, and Kara shudders—electricity and ice down her spine at the same time. 

He’s wrong. 

There’s the countless times she's mangled furniture, or appliances, or the endless rotation of broken glasses. 

And then there’s innumerable bruises she's left on people. On _Alex_. And the scar on her arm— 

A lot of times trying to do the “right thing” and getting someone hurt when she got in over her head. She is so, so in over her head right now. 

“Crap. Crap—I can’t.” She pulls her hands off him. Everything about this is right—except the part where it’s *not* right. Everything is jumbled and she’s not _supposed_ to be doing this, but she’s already _started_ and she can’t fix this and— “I—I have a boyfriend.” How do you _forget_ something like that? 

Nothing else seems real; that’s what it comes down to. Her mouth and the words tumbling out of it seem connected to a different universe, where this omega isn’t straddling her lap, hasn’t _picked_ her, hasn’t decided to close the distance and let that carefully-crafted disguise drop; let her feel the fever running under his skin, the tremor in his muscles, let her scent how far gone he is. 

But it’s not. It’s not unreal, and she is _such_ an ass for letting this happen. 

“Beta boy? He seems like a nice guy. You could invite him.” The wave of pheromones that rolls off him lets her know exactly how much he likes the idea. 

That is both the most devastatingly perfect solution to this entire situation—and also far more enthusiastic than she has ever been about having sex with her boyfriend. 

Is it bad that that’s what finishes this whole adventure for her? 

“I’m sorry. I—I can’t.” Frustration boils under her skin—not at him, though. At herself. And at this situation. Screw her stupid lack of social knowledge that comes back to bite her just when she feels like she might’ve gotten something _right_ for once. “I’m sorry. I must’ve misunderstood something—“ 

Screw everything. Disappointing this omega who thought she had what he needed. Who put himself in her hands. She can still feel her knot pulsing in _his_ hand, but she’s so thoroughly frustrated and disappointed with herself it doesn't matter. Just… screw everything. 

He pulls back, and she misses the feeling of his skin under her lips instantly, viscerally. His eyes are almost black and the intensity in them as he searches her face—she wants to hide. “Fuck. You’re not kidding.” He sounds disbelieving. 

_Rao_ , Kara wishes she was. She shakes her head. 

“ _Shit_.” Reluctantly, he slides off her lap, and she feels a brief chill on her skin before—

Yep. She puts her knot away, puts her hands back on the steering wheel and tightens them til she can’t safely grip any harder and blushes furiously, determinedly _not_ looking down at her lap and ignoring the tightness in her jeans. Can she bust the zipper on these? Theoretically her knot should have _enough_ give, but she’s never gone full alpha in her everyday clothes before, and she’s also theoretically indestructible. Even the soft parts. 

There’s a long moment where (she hopes) they both stare straight ahead and try to catch their breath. Or get ahead of the embarrassment. Or both. 

“Why—“ Calvin starts from the passenger seat. Kara looks at him. Thank Rao, he’s staring straight out the windshield. He looks at her. Frowns. Cocks his head. "Wait. *Seriously*?" 

Kara has no idea what he’s talking about. "You… you said your car broke down?" She says, swallowing down a panic attack. 

This is exactly how it used to go, in junior high. People would say something, and she’d respond, and then they’d get confused—and then they'd laugh at her. Her head is spinning and there’s a freefall feeling in her stomach and she’s gripping the steering wheel trying to stay grounded but she can’t grip as hard as she wishes she could because— 

That is exactly what he said, she tells herself. _Exactly_. 

He looks at her for a long moment, and then buries his face in one hand. "Oh my god." His shoulders shake. 

He comes up with laughter on his face, but this doesn’t feel _exactly_ like those other situations; it feels like he’s not really laughing at _her_ —Or maybe that’s just because her body is still buzzing where he pressed against her; she can’t manage to hang on to a permanent sense of embarrassment. 

She’s sure that’ll wear off, though. 

"Oh my god." He repeats. “Oh my god. I… feel like a pedophile. I just flooded the _shit_ out of you, and… you’re a virgin, aren’t you?” 

“No!” He raises an eyebrow at her and she realizes he didn’t mean _that_ kind of virgin. “Oh.” Her boyfriend has told her bluntly and several times by this point that he’d be okay with getting knotted by her, but if she’s honest, she doesn’t want to do the heat sex thing just because she “has to”. For a whole boatload of reasons that she doesn’t want to think about, when she’s in sympathetic rut and there’s an omega in heat sitting next to her with his scent tugging at something inside her that she should’ve recognized sooner. “I’m… I’m sorry?” Really—how was she supposed to know “Hey, can I bum a ride?” was really, “Hey, can you be my heat buddy?” 

She was supposed to have grown up on Earth and internalized all this shit, that’s how. 

“It’s… really not your fault.” He buries his face in his hands. “Probably.” He unburies his face and scrubs at it. Mutters something under his breath that sounds like, “Whoever kept you under that rock should be shot.” Kara frowns. "Um, I should probably…” 

"Want me to drive you home?" Kara asks meekly. 

He starts to nod, then— "Actually—can you drop me off down at the pier?" 

"Definitely." Kara twists the metal of the key in her haste to turn the ignition. 

It becomes a thing about Kara’s key to the car—you have to slide it in at a funny angle, and you always have to turn it about 45 degrees farther to get it to turn over. 

//

Eliza is home by the time she gets back. Of course. 

She parks and grits her teeth—seriously considers floating up to her room and climbing in, but she hasn’t flown in forever, not since— 

_”You girls are in so. Much. Trouble.”_

It’d be funny, looking back, if not for what happened afterward. All it takes is the wrong move, at the wrong time. If someone happens to be looking. 

Thankfully, her knot has softened enough to not be super awkward, but she probably smells like cigarettes and heat-scent, and she does _not_ want Eliza to know about that. She’s going to be pissed enough about the car. 

Well. If she _jumps_ , and then _climbs_ onto the second floor… 

It’s surprisingly easy to pretend-scramble up the gutter. Pulling the screen off the window is easy, and the window is open, anyways. She always leaves it open, until Eliza asks her to close it. She’s not always the best at keeping track of temperatures. 

She peels her clothes off and stuffs them in the bottom of her laundry basket. Thanks Rao she left an extra towel in her room and heads straight for the shower. 

The scent washes away glacially slowly; it almost seems heavier, at first. Before she opens the scrub with the masking agent in it and starts scrubbing. 

The masking agent has taken care of the heat-scent. But as the scent washes away… the urgency from before doesn't. 

You’d think, if it was "sympathetic", it would _end_ once you were away from the person. But no, it didn't. And it could last anywhere from less than an hour to the span of a full heat. Popular myth was that some omegas were more " _powerful_ ", could trigger an alpha’s rut early and even send betas into a heat that seemed a lot more like an alpha or omega heat. 

Kara is a jumbled mess of feelings. Everything feels so vast, and not in a good way—even reaching for the shampoo for the second time feels like reaching across an immense gap that Kara doesn't know if she can cross. 

She needed to leave. Needed to leave before she did something she couldn’t undo. 

The tiny muscles in her scalp and down the back of her neck relax under the pressure of her fingers working the shampoo in again. She wants to melt into the feeling. Can’t, because she’s the one doing it. 

Her whole skin feels wrong. 

She needed to leave. Hates that she had to. She hopes Calvin gets what he needs. 

Without someone there in front of her, needing, it doesn’t feel the same. When it comes to her, to what she wants, she doesn't want to think about what she wants. She doesn't want to want. 

There’s only one thing she remembers wanting. 

It feels… vulnerable? Like this. Like she needs permission to even think about this, without someone in front of her, needing her to. Like this is taking something. 

It’s not. It's not taking, or giving. She doesn’t feel that hunger anymore, like she’s about to crawl out of her skin if she’s not inside someone. She’s not helping anyone; there’s no focus. Just the way it aches. 

She’s never just… fallen into someone like that. 

A memory flashes to the front of her mind. The heat of a body curled up against hers. A hand in her hair. Calvin’s hands in her hair. The achy swollen feeling of arousal even without the knot. Kara leans heavily against the side of the shower, the memory of that first heat, the potential shivering in the air, the way she could have just… given up everything. She didn’t have any idea what she was giving up. Maybe she still doesn’t. 

She never _got_ to fall into someone like that, before today. Not really. Not knowing what it was, what she was. 

And now she's still falling, into some kind of sympathetic heat, and she _left_ , she chose to be alone, and after what happened earlier, knowing what was happening, knowing what she _could_ have felt, being alone? 

Kara’s hand closing on her knot feels _better_. As absurd as the concept is—like the clench around her knot will hold her together, somehow. 

She’s not sure if the emotional component is real, or if she’s just… being alien, again. She’s never heard anyone talk about it. Just "Need". "Mate". "Fuck". "Knot". 

What it feels like, though? It feels like whatever skin she has around her emotions is as thin and fragile as tissue. Like everything could come spilling out. *Is* spilling out, bleeding out of her pores. The tightness of her hand is holding her together—but it’s just her imagination; there’s no one else. It’s just her. 

She won’t knot; she can’t, not with the suppressants she's on. But the place where it would be is still sensitive like she can. Still needs that grip, that clench like being tied. Like being held. Everything is edgeless. Lost. She pulses her hand there between strokes. It’s not enough. It’s never going to be enough. 

She tries to imagine picking up where she left off with Calvin. But she doesn't feel strong anymore. Tries to remember how it felt to push him up against the steering column. But it’s different, this time. This time, it’s Kara, itching out of her skin, Kara with a stomachache that won’t go away, that doesn’t make sense. Nothing makes sense. Except the scent that she follows. That steady heartbeat. 

It soothes her, makes her skin feel alive, electric, _real_. And she needs that more than anything, in the middle of a heat. 

And this time, it’s Calvin tugging her close, urging Kara to climb on top of him, crawl all over him, push him back against the steering column and breathe him in, hand threading through her hair, telling her it’s alright. 

And when the hurt comes loose, when the ache in her stomach eases and the one lower than that sharpens, Calvin is bracketing Kara’s hips with his thighs, not pushing but still insistent, open; urges Kara to move against him, let it hurt less, let him take care of her, let him see her. And Kara… 

Kara trusts him literally more than anyone else on this whole planet, right now. Stops pretending she’s whole. Follows his directions blindly, soft and needy, and he lets her taste his skin, lets her push up his shirt, help him wriggle out of his sweatpants. He sees Kara sitting back—almost on her heels, just looking, and aching, and shakes his head with a weirdly familiar amused patience. 

Calvin guides the head of her knot until Kara can push into him, and then lets out this shivery sigh, and arches, and— 

And they’re not in the car. They’re in a bed. And that’s not Calvin’s body closing around hers, that feels like home. She can’t make it be Calvin, not if she wants to feel like this, wants to feel covered—not if she wants to be alright. 

It’s not alright, thinking about this. But she hears “Calvin”’s voice saying her name, and fuck, of _course_. The heat comes back full force, re-aligning everything inside her, turning her knees to water, turning her into a single point of _want_. It’s wrong and she’s going to hate herself later, but she’ll be alright. It’s wrong, but it’s the only thing that feels real. 

Kara’s hips stutter against her hand, heat flooding through her, splitting her open. Alex gasps. Kara shudders. _Please_. Her entire body is just one thought, just one word etched into every cell. _Please_. She mouths softly against Alex’s pulse; noses carefully against her jaw. Whatever tension she was holding onto before leaves her completely, the last threads of her self-control. Alex is the only thing holding her together, now. Kara doesn’t come, but she feels part of herself spilling into Alex, whether invisible and emotional or a surge of that heat inside her. 

Alex’s hand buries itself in her hair again; pulls Kara up to kiss her, Kara whimpering against her mouth, pull her back down into that scent that makes her lose herself and makes her _home_ all at the same time.

When her knot starts to swell, Kara fights it, pulls back even though the need dragging her in drives her hips forward anyways—she can still curl her fists in the sheets, can still slide her arms out from under Alex’s shoulders and maybe start to push up, go rigid, ashamed, scared, can still _fight_ , can still try not to feel it. Alex doesn’t have to accept this, even if Kara is coming apart, doesn’t have to let Kara strand herself in Alex’s body—even if Kara knots her, Alex doesn't have to let her in. Alex doesn’t _want_ to let her in.

Alex’s hand finds its way into the curve of her lower back. Kara stops fighting, goes pliant. Alex’s hand continues that same soft soothing motion, that insistent gentle urging, palm flattening against her skin, fingers curling. Tugging her closer again. Taking her entire knot and arching underneath her while Kara’s knot swells inside her. Begging for _More_.

Kara isn’t in control of this. Not even remotely. Her pulse thunders and all she can do is feel her body betray her. Her mind, imagining this. Admitting without words what she feels, what she needs—the way Alex affects her.

She wants to crawl deeper inside Alex and never leave.

Kara buries her head against her forearm, braced on the wall. She’s done for. Can’t stop, either what’s playing out in her head or the hot tension gathering in her gut.

They’re locked together, but it’s not over yet. Kara’s body is swollen with need inside Alex’s, is heavy and hard and tight and Kara can’t get away from this, can’t hide it, how much she _wants_ , it’s stretching Alex’s body around her and it’s so much to ask, it’s all too much to ask, so she curls her arms back under Alex's shoulders and buries her face against Alex’s neck and drowns, listens to Alex’s heart race and tastes the way her neck strains when she gasps.

Alex’s nails etch bright lines into her lower back, drag out from the base of her spine. Alex whispers in her ear, _Mine_. Her body spasms, clenching down, claiming her.

Kara sees white.

//

When her vision clears, she’s… fine. Her knees are buckled against the side of the tub, but there’s no holes in it. She made a mess, but that… will wash off.

She waits for the guilt to hit. It doesn’t. _Not even for…?_

Apparently not.

Her body echoes with the need from a few moments before—satisfied. Quiet. The complete despondency she’s gotten used to during her last few heats is gone. Makes it hard to _make_ herself feel guilty, when her whole body is calm and subdued, focused and present, and she knows it has nothing to do with anything she did physically. So she doesn’t try; it’s enough of a relief that she made it out of one spike of a heat not feeling completely gutted.

She’s alright. Nothing is broken. She’s alright. All she needed to do, apparently, was think about Alex.

That’s almost worse than anything.

//

Her boyfriend seems more shocked that she turned Calvin down than he does angry about the whole thing. Kara supposes that's a win.

Now that she has Calvin’s scent off her skin and her clothes, her other situation is less pressing. But she still aches, all over. Wants to itch her skin off.

Well. Itch… may not be the right word.

"Like, it turns you _off_?" Her boyfriend asks when she says that cuddling with him makes it feel better. He sounds vaguely affronted.

"No!" Well, what _does_ it do, if not that? "It just… it makes me feel calmer. Less…” She waves one hand vaguely, keeping her face firmly buried against his shoulder—both to hide her blush and to keep breathing in his scent. "Urgent." She feels guilty the moment it comes out of her mouth.

Is that what that means? What does that mean, if she’s dating him because it turns her _off_?

He snorts softly. "So you don’t have to jack off for the next three days."

"Ew." She smacks him lightly. Settles back against him. “And yes.”

He laughs, and she supposes that’s a win, too.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Interlude Part Two: Things Kara Read Over Christmas Break

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Worldbuilding. :P I won't feel bad if y'all want to skip this part. 
> 
> Warnings for: Bad pseudo-science, me thinking too much about the social implications of ABO.
> 
> A LOT of the pseudo-science, especially towards the end, comes from "Sex At Dawn", which is a really fun book, but it certainly has its critics.

**So—diving right in. This series is called "The Myth of the Female Alpha", and you spend a decent amount of time unpacking various myths (of the cultural and religious varieties) about genera. Care to sum up a few?**

Sure! My favorite ones are probably: 

\- The idea that, during heat, omegas always want it (off-suppressants, they “always want it”, too, but during heat they lose control and can’t help themselves), and alphas can’t control themselves. The “omega passivity/alphic aggressiveness” hypothesis, and:  
\- The idea that heat is primarily about pairbonding and even more specifically about reproduction within the context of a bonded pair. 

**That… would be quite a leap to imagine that that last one isn’t true, especially.**

Yeah, that one usually gets people. But, a lot of the misconceptions people hold can usually be traced back to one of those two ideas. 

**Then what _would_ you suggest?**

One, that heat is about the pack bond, and it’s not actually dominance-focused, or even all that competitive. 

It gets competitive because the focus on pairbonding means people are fighting over heat partners, because generally speaking, you’re going to have the best health outcomes if you find a heat partner—and they’re only ever supposed to have one, right? So you have unmated individuals scrambling to secure heat partners, and fighting with each other over ones that are seen as the most “valuable”—both alphas and omegas. 

So you have the idea that alphas go into “rages” to claim an omega—and you also have omegas fighting to “keep” their alpha, under the impression that they’ll just wander off outside of a heat. Both of them start to look very similar after a while; you’re just hearing about the anxiety of an unmated individual versus a bonded one. 

So, two—I’d suggest that the experience of heat is actually quite similar for alphas and omegas. And I think that that’s borne out by the results of quite a few studies that of the health outcomes for unmated alphas and omegas. They need the same basic thing, and that’s pack. 

The idea that that competition is somehow the way things are “supposed to be”, no matter how _bad_ at it so many people seem to be—even people that are successful at the pairbonding model—just gets passed off as evolution doing its work. And you have people helpfully adding that alphas are _supposed_ to be promiscuous, but omegas bond to the alpha that claims them—and only that alpha, unless something happens to break that bond, and then they’re devastated. Even just acknowledging that most “mating bites” are temporary and don’t last much longer than the heat itself… doesn’t really get to the root of the issue. 

Probably the closest thing to a summary I could come up with is: Don’t go it alone. Not if you have the option. And, take suppressants. 

**Okay, just to make sure everyone heard that—Female alphas can have children and, for lack of a better term, father children, as well.**

Yep. 

Not at the same time, of course—that’d be a ridiculous amount of energy expenditure to have both available at the same time, all the time. 

But that’s something even male alphas run into—knotting just doesn't happen unless there's an omega in heat involved. So for female alphas, it’s not something that's going to be all that visible outside of their own heats, or a partner’s. 

**How is that even possible?**

Well, a penis is just a clitoris that's gotten out of hand, so that shouldn't really surprise anyone at all. The rest is just internals—which is really what makes the differences between genera. 

**Can you go into that a little bit?**

Yeah. Scientifically, heats are part of a reproductive strategy that uses pheromones to signal fertility and receptivity to mating. That requires, one, a sense of smell to pick up on that, and two, the physical ability to act on that information. 

Betas vary in terms of their sense of smell, but generally, it isn’t nearly as good as an alpha or omega’s. Because of that, they don’t usually display things like sympathetic heats. 

They also don’t have the ability to respond physically—things like knotting, males having children, females having knots, all require a certain physical infrastructure, and betas don’t develop that. And in some senses, that’s good; they have a different reproductive cycle with fertile periods that occur more frequently than an alpha or omega’s, but without a lot of the “noise” that tends to accompany the other two genera. 

They do, however, all release a kind of “calming pheromone”. They aren’t necessarily able to detect it, but they all give it off. It alleviates a lot of the worst symptoms of heat, and interestingly enough, in close proximity to an alpha or omega in enough pain, can even end a heat that’s going badly. It may also prevent them from experiencing heats as extreme as an alpha or omega that could be triggered by proximity to a member of the polar genera. 

Interestingly, testosterone (and the absence of estrogen) literally deadens sense of smell—it’s something that’s well documented—so female alphas _and_ omegas are actually far more likely to occur than male ones. 

**Wait—so you’re saying that male alphas are actually rarer than female ones?**

I am indeed. 

**Then how do they "happen”?**

Current theory is the uterine environment—it seems the likeliest that they’d be the younger siblings of women who became alphas or omegas. Similar to some theories on how gay people are born—if the oldest is one of the polar genera, the younger ones will all have that sensitivity and, to some degree, even experience heats. It’s how you see such variation within betas as a whole; you have some betas who genuinely can’t pick up on the pheromonal ball game happening right in front of them, and then at the other end of the spectrum, you have betas who are *almost* alphas or omegas in their own right—they just don't have the physical infrastructure to support the physiology of it, because that’s, to a degree, determined in utero as well. If genetics dictates they don’t have it, they (probably) won’t; but chemistry that’s already present can "push" someone one direction or another. 

**Wait—then what’s the difference between a "receptive" beta and an omega?**

Well, obviously, the men can’t get pregnant. For women, even omega-adjacent betas have the stabilizing or calming effect that’s considered characteristic of that genera, and that would of course preclude the kind of extreme shifts that alphas and omegas go through.

**So, when we contacted you about this series, you were aware of the working title of the project—a bit of a pun on the idea that female alphas are incredibly rare because they’re recorded at exceptionally low rates in the population. You’re saying that’s completely wrong?**

I’d say it’s totally understandable, given the kinds of difficulties female alphas face. And omegas—but that’s a different series, sorry. 

You have a culture that celebrates—privileges—maleness where it intersects with alpha-ness. That sense that how men express that—physiologically, emotionally, and so forth—is uniquely what it _means_ to be an alpha. 

It’s why you see that obsession with fertility—particularly omega fertility. Because it’s seen as very un-alpha—and therefore very unmanly—to bear children. Not because no alphas _can_ , but because that inability is characteristic of a very particular subset of alphas, even though they’re absolutely not representative of alphas as a whole. 

That’s why female alphas are seen as non-existent. Not because they _are_ , but because they’re kind of just… un-imaginable, within our paradigm. 

**What supposedly makes alphas better, and male alphas the "best"? The "most alpha”?**

Going back to the above, male alphas can’t bear children. That's a major one. They are 100% omega-free, themselves. 

That attitude is the result of a few thousand years’ worth of omegas as commodities for getting children, securing bloodlines, etc. If you can’t bear children, you can be a person. 

For male alphas also—there’s an idea probably almost as old as Western civilization that alpha and omega are less like physical sexes and more like transitory states—which, given the way heats seem to upend stable things like physical sex, could almost seem like a spiritual or magical phenomenon, when you have men—and only certain ones, at certain times of the year—that can have children and women who can "father" them. So, in that worldview, you have the alpha, the active/penetrative/inseminating participant; and the omega, the receptive/passive/inseminated participant. 

Male alphas would be considered permanently in the "alpha state", since their bodies outside of heat align with the role they fall into. Similarly with female omegas. 

It also links back to the idea of the Divine Husband—which is a spiritual concept stemming from that older model of alpha and omega as transitory magical states, or in some places, a type of possession or blessing. The Alpha is required of anyone standing in as that role—which is to say, ancient kings. And the Omega… 

Think about the Lady of the Lake.

**Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords?**

[ _laughs_ ] Exactly. And we all know that sometimes a sword isn’t just a sword, if you get my drift? 

There’s a theory, based the fact that omegas were believed to cause heats, that before you had associations with witchcraft and sorcery—and after that, contagion—it’s speculated that they _chose_ who would be king. Because unsuppressed omega heat can cause, well, a lot of chaos—but they also reveal who’s capable of that alpha state, and sometimes pull a few betas in with them besides. Which may have led to the belief that omegas can _make_ someone into an alpha or omega—and that’s definitely a belief that survived up until almost the present day. 

That spiritual component being a requirement to be king is a big deal, because then you theoretically have the potential for female kings. They may not look like it, but when a heat comes on, they have what it takes. _And_ there’s more of them than there are male alphas. 

So saying that male alphas are "more alpha" is a way of saying that they’re physically and spiritually more fit to hold power, because they’re _always_ "Alpha". 

But even if you ascribe to that worldview, they're not _actually_ always in those states; male alphas still can’t knot unless they’re... inside... an omega in heat. It’s mostly just about social power—If you’re the most common type of alpha, and suddenly you’re disqualified because you’re not alpha enough _outside_ of heat, the field is a lot more open for the few male alphas to grab for power. 

Once that’s in place, you have all kinds of things that people made up—pretty arbitrarily—about why male alphas are "more alpha" than any other alphas, and thus more masculine. Things like strength to size ratio, brute physical strength, aggressiveness, "dominance" (which unfortunately usually translates to "rapeyness"), height, physical size, knot size—whatever you can think of, they’ve probably used that to determine “how alpha” someone was. 

**Is it maybe better, then, to say that genera and not gender is the important thing? Or genera instead of sex?**

No. And here's why: 

Female and male alphas are both alphas in terms of the role they play in heats, but they have utterly different styles associated with them—mostly for cultural reasons. And those cultural reasons—masculinity and femininity—are gender. Gender means that female alphas occupy a different position in society than male ones. There are different stories told about them because they’re constructed as very different things—one example of that being that female alphas don’t actually exist. And when they do, they’re treated completely differently. 

Sex doesn’t work, either, because male and female alphas don’t share a similar level of testosterone. "Alphaness" is separate from "maleness" or "femaleness"; it is literally (almost entirely) about insemination of or reaction to omegas. Male alphas are less responsive to scent-based cues because testosterone/lack of estrogen deadens the sense of smell. 

**So—female and male alphas are actually almost separate genera.**

Taking into consideration the variance in beta experiences—the main commonality between them is the "calming" pheromone; everything else is up for grabs—there aren't just three genera, at all. 

**Why three genera, then?**

Because the model of alpha/active/penetrative/inseminating, omega/receptive/passive/inseminated, and beta/balancing/calming still persists. It’s an old idea, and it underpins a lot of how we do things. 

It’s also worth noting that in some cases, it was thought that a beta was _necessary_ for conception to take place, since they had the same (heavy quotation marks around "same") kind of sex all the time and had children whenever. 

It seems like, once people realized that betas _weren’t_ necessary for that, they were "demoted" in many places in favor of alphas/men. 

Either way—two polar genera, with sharp and intense changes towards one tendency or the other, and the intermediaries—betas never quite lost that designation. Intermediaries, binding agents; the link between heaven and earth. 

The two polar genera made for intense connections, but the intermediary genera brought stability and made the whole thing _work_. 

**So—the male-alpha versus female-alpha “style” you mentioned—or like you said, the line between gender and genera.**

Yeah, let’s do a quick overview. 

At least in Western culture & mythology, female alphas tend to be depicted as having a slightly more comfortable/co-existing relationship with omegas, and obviously that’s been used both to their advantage and to “keep them in line”—i.e., behind the boy-alphas. 

In some cases, you have them being relied on as guardians of the omegas (if they were looked at favorably)—and this probably did include caretaking during heats (which in some places may have implied that female alphas did tend to be the dominant omega’s “favorites”, or a past dominant omega’s “favorites”), despite later insistence to the contrary (e.g., female alphas had to be infertile, or were willingly celibate—good soldiers, loyal guardians, etc.)

In places where they weren’t looked on favorably, they were seen as kind of “fox in the henhouse” type figures—muddying up lines of succession where those were tied to individual parentage (which is why it makes more sense to go with the hypothesis that for a very long time, succession had to do with pack, not individual parentage; female alphas were protecting their brothers’ interests where men had gained dominance). 

Boy-alphas have a pretty well-established mythical reputation as wandering “lone wolf” types, and in boy-wolf packs (Teutonic mythology, quite often); they’re also the ones most associated with the “alphic rage” you see in mythology—but it’s usually valorized and praised when it’s in defense of the community, whereas female alphas’ defensive violence (and sacrifice) is simply expected. 

When you have female alphas inhabiting the role of wanderers or as violent/raging, you have things like the Amazons, where they have a directly adversarial relationship with the boy-alphas and the betas, or assuming roles in Viking war-bands (occasionally, there’ll be some in the Teutonic wolf-packs mentioned above)

They’re kind of wild cards, and not very well-documented; where they are, they’re loyal (and celibate) guardians—who usually die so that some random wandering boy-alpha can rescue the princess, or some fortunate soldier who just happens to be back at the village while everyone else is off at war and there’s a sneak attack that overwhelms the guards left behind. 

Or they’re these shadowy threatening outsider figures; and sometimes, they’re these shadowy threatening figures _within_ the community, where you have a particularly, um, successful alpha who gains access to a king’s wives/harem. 

Some existing anxiety around the inability to differentiate between female alphas and women of other genera led to a little more emphasis (in some places that could afford to) on “proving” whether or not a woman could have children—since female alphas were thought to be incapable of bearing children, which is actually not the case. It also may have reflected some anxiety on the boy-alphas’ parts about the favored status of female alphas: Were they closer to full partners and members of the community than they were to heat-servants, like boy-alphas were in some areas? 

**Okay—so, question. If both alphas and omegas experience heats, what’s the difference between the two (apart from who can get pregnant)?**  
   
[ _laughs_ ] Between self-reported experiences and the lab results, we have a pretty confusing picture. 

The extremes are comparable, in terms of cyclical heats. Both alphas and omegas display reactions to heat pheromones, both from their genera and others. Omegas and alphas set each other off, so to speak. 

Alphas behave as if they’re far more receptive to others’ pheromones—sympathetic rut and all—whereas omegas tend not to display outwardly if they are affected—which has skewed self-reported results in comparison to physiological testing, which shows that they’re just as affected. 

But several scientists have noted that that may be the result of quite a bit of social conditioning. Displaying signs of heat places omegas in danger, whereas alphas are valorized and are encouraged (or at least expected) to display how they’re affected—to display _that_ they’re affected.

Which doesn’t contradict the deadening of male alphas’ sense of smell via testosterone. To them, it’s a big deal, and even if they don’t experience anything approaching what a female alpha or omega does, they’ve _learned_ that it’s a big deal, that it’s overwhelming, and so they behave like it is. 

And unfortunately, far too many people buy into the implications of that idea. 

**So omegas have more willpower, is what you’re saying.**  
   
[ _laughs again_ ] Definitely far more than they’re given credit for. But with how the social aspect of it is constructed, it’s not that alphas lack it, and it’s not that omegas completely lose it—what we’ve consistently seen in studies is that omegas will hold out until they absolutely can’t (without severe consequences) because they’ve been taught to, and alphas will, in a lot of cases, not even try. And they have a lot of ready-made excuses for why they don’t have to. 

**So all that "alphic" aggressiveness is made-up?**

Omegas get plenty aggressive—if they’re not going to be punished for it. 

It’s a bit of a chicken-or-egg situation. Aggressiveness is ascribed to one group when it’s not a unique characteristic, and then the "opposite" group has to embody the opposite, or, even displays of that characteristic are twisted *into* the opposite. 

In both cases, you’re actually talking about pheromonal receptivity; that is, how sensitive and responsive alphas and omegas are to the signals other people give off, how _affected_ or changed they can be. And in most ways, they’re actually very comparable—omegas can’t always impregnate people, but they can be rather aggressive when it comes to securing a heat partner. [ _laughs_ ] 

But "receptivity" doesn’t sound very "alpha", does it? Because our culture has gone to great lengths to cast omegas only as receptive, and to make alphas "active". 

So—both of those genera _seem_ to react very differently to heats. But even the language we use makes them seem more different, when they aren’t, not necessarily. But then that raises the question—what is the difference? What drives that? 

Popular science’s answer is "Testosterone and estrogen!" But like we already covered, that doesn’t apply to the majority of alphas and omegas, not really. 

**We’ve all heard enough about omega/omega relationships—let’s get to other ones:**

**Probably the arrangement most favored by evolutionary biologists for other species; the "alpha pair". Why did that not stick here?**

Because our entire society is set up to validate & affirm the alpha—alpha as progenitor, as the beginning, as the "spark". In places where omegas hold more social power, often times property/inheritance is passed down through them—you can't very well keep track of who the "father" is unless you control them. So, control of the omega/woman equals control of money and land. There’s an interesting shift towards the individual that that brings about. 

Also, certain schools of biology will go to great lengths to tell you that the "alpha pair" is never both alphas; they're a bonded pair, a breeding pair. But that's it, that’s all they are. A true "alpha pair" is considered unthinkable—unless you’re talking about instances where alpha siblings shared an omega or a harem of omegas, but that’s still, um, very different. 

**Do alpha couples exist, though?**

Of course. Male/female couples usually pass undetected, because it’s assumed that the female is an omega. Same-sex couples, it’s harder to hide, and that attracts a lot of negative attention—there’s less stigma around same-sex beta couples, but it still exists. Same-sex _and_ same-genera? They get a lot of flak—like you’re probably already familiar with. 

But especially when it's two members of the polarized genera, it’s considered unnatural, because—the purpose of those genera is reproduction, right? That’s the whole point of heats, according to pretty much every source. Anything outside of that is "bad". 

**Wait. So, there are other things heat is _for_?**  
   
Of course; sex between mammals—especially our branch of the primate family—isn’t just about reproduction, it’s about social bonds. 

Starting from a higher level—within primates as a whole, you have two reproductive "strategies”—you have heats, outside of which there’s really not much sexual activity. They’re visible, and they’re intense, and they involve sharp physical changes—and they’re also limited in duration. That’s one reproductive strategy primates have. 

You also have the "stealth" strategy, where it’s much harder for potential partners to tell whether or not an individual is in heat—that’s where you see a lot of sex, all the time. Like bonobos. There’s not a lot of visual or olfactory signals when females are fertile, so you just have to bang a lot and see what sticks. From a biological-imperative perspective. And those are our closest relatives—bonobos and chimpanzees. 

And then you have us. And we have a segment of the population that seems to go by the "stealth" strategy—betas—and then a smaller but noisier group that has the cyclical, highly visible heats. 

It’s interesting because, yes, those highly visible heats tend to occur in more monogamous-behavior settings. Pair-bonded settings. But the pattern you see emerging with humans isn’t the disappearance of one or the other, it’s the emergence of the "calming influence" of betas. 

And it’s very specific—suppressants, which seem like the most readily available comparison to that effect, really _aren’t_ a very good comparison. Suppressants allow the individual in question to go on about their day and affect no one (effectively removing heat altogether). But with unsuppressed heats (or the kinds of suppressant-type chemicals you can find in different plants) you have betas and alphas and omegas working together to make sure the affected member of the group is comfortable and gets what they need. And in the process, get all of those bonding chemicals all over each other. 

And, sidenote—that contact doesn’t have to be sexual, or it doesn’t have to end up with anyone having sex, especially if you have a beta in the mix. So, betas generally de-escalate the situation and make it so that it’s about _more_ than reproduction: it’s now about caring for a member of your community—with a heavy sexual implication, still, but much more decentralized and distributed and cooperative. 

And in return, the group members experiencing heat—well, their pheromones—ensure that those group bonds persist, group loyalty remains strong, and connections between communities remain stable, which leads to a higher population than the more low-concentration territorial pair-bonding strategy. It suggests that, more than just being disruptive and annoying, caring for a vulnerable member of the community is innate. The competitive-alpha model, where alphas go into a "rage" and fight off all the other "suitors", is very removed from that. 

However—what this seems to have led to in the polarized generas is a worsening of heat symptoms—So, you could have an omega or an alpha who’s isolated get quite ill and possibly die from the secondary symptoms, dehydration and the like, which is not what your average heat-experiencing non-human primate would go through. 

But, like, they were never supposed to _be_ alone, so—what happened there? Either a failing on the part of the community, or an individual separated from their community of origin, willingly or otherwise. 

**Dang.**

It also makes the genera/gender/sex question clearer—you have two strategies combined into one, with the physical artifacts of both. They’re a single system within the human population, but there’s still evidence of that convergence. Genera belongs to the heat strategy, and sex belongs to disguise. 

**Like a conflict?**

Only if you see evolution as a battle—and you’re rooting for a particular “side” to win. And I’d argue—and I think the science supports it—there are no sides; it’s a single system, and it’s been relatively stable for tens of thousands—if not hundreds of thousands—of years. 

The piece that makes it all make sense—maybe unsurprisingly—is adding the social-bonding dimension, and the beta’s role in facilitating that. Otherwise you have two genera that only ever come together for heats and child-rearing— _if_ the male stays around that long—and groups that don’t ever grow larger than a mated pair and their offspring that haven’t reached a sufficient level of sexual maturity to go off on their own. 

You’d have geographically separated pairs or individuals, a much smaller but also extremely widespread population. You, essentially, wouldn’t have the evolutionary building blocks of our society today. 

And I say that because there’s such a heavy emphasis placed on the mated-pair strain in our history. It is important, and it’s not going away—but it’s not what made us successful as a species. Society did that, and human society needs far more than just—one alpha/male, one omega/female, and their children—in order to exist. 

And, suppressants have allowed most of us to avoid just how much we need that group connection; but if you take that away, you have a huge population of people that will suffer immensely from the lack of a group connection, because we have no strategy or socialization in place to make those connections anymore, outside of some very sketchy marginal spaces. We’ve placed such an emphasis on an oppositional, competitive model that we have significant psychic damage to repair as a society before we just jump right in, as well. 

You can argue that this is a kind of self-directed evolution, in the direction of a mated-pair paradigm—but is that undermining the exact tendencies that made society possible in the first place?


End file.
